ISSN: 2044-9216
juuriKiiui MiiiirruiiuiuiiiciiuiiiiiruiJuiiustotheParanormal „ _ „
- October 2012
In Search of Higher Intelligence:
if The Daemonic Muse(s) of Aleister
.Crowley, Timothy Leary, and Robert
Anton Wilson - Matt Cardin
ma,
ranthropology
Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 3 No. 4 (October 2012)
Board of Reviewers
Dr. Fiona Bowie (Dept. Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Bristol)
Dr. Iain R. Edgar (Dept. Anthropology, Durham University)
Prof. David J. HufFord (Centre for Ethnography & Folklore, University of Pennsylvania)
Prof. Charles D. Laughlin (Dept. Sociology & Anthropology, Carleton University)
Dr. David Luke (Dept. Psychology & Counseling, University of Greenwich)
Dr. James McClenon (Dept. Social Sciences, Elizabeth State University)
Dr. Sean O'Callaghan (Department of Politics, Philosophy & Religion, University of Lancaster)
Dr. Serena Roney-Dougal (Psi Research Centre, Glastonbury)
Dr. William Rowlandson (Dept. Hispanic Studies, University of Kent)
Dr. Mark A. Schroll (Institute for Consciousness Studies, Rhine Research Centre)
Dr. Gregory Shushan (Ian Ramsay Centre for Science & Religion, University of Oxford)
Dr. Angela Voss (EXESESO, University of Exeter)
Dr. Lee Wilson (Dept. Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge)
Dr. Michael Winkelman (School of Human Evolution & Social Change, Arizona State University)
Prof. David E. Young (Dept. Anthropology, University of Alberta)
Honorary Members of the Board
Prof. Stephen Braude (Dept. Philosophy, University of Maryland)
Paul Devereux (Royal College of Art)
Prof. Charles F. Emmons (Dept. Sociology, Gettysburg College)
Prof. Patric V Giesler (Dept. Anthropology, Gustavus Adolphus College)
Prof. Ronald Hutton (Dept. History, University of Bristol)
Prof. Stanley Krippner (Faculty of Psychology, Saybrook University)
Dr. Edith Turner (Dept. Anthropology University of Virginia)
Dr. Robert Van de Castle (Dept. Psychiatry, University of Virginia)
Editor
Jack Hunter (Dept. Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Bristol)
Cover Artwork
Rosie Thomas
Vol. 3 NO. 4
2
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Contents
Clock System or Cloud System?:
Applying Popper's Metaphor to the
Study of Human Consciousness -
Hillary S. Webb (pp. 4-121
Commentary: Cultural Evolution
and Technological Evolution in
Consciousness Studies -
MarkA.Schroll [pp.1317]
In Search of Higher Intelligence:
The Daemonic Muse(s) of Aleister
Crowley, Timothy Leary, and Robert
Anton Wilson - Matt Cardin [pp. is -28i
Magic, Science and Religion:
A Conversation With Eugene Burger
(Part 1] - Jack Hunter [pp.29 311
Get thee enhurued!': Magic Mush-
rooms, Time and the End of the
World - Andy Letcher [pp.3243]
A Letter to Anthropologists -
John R.Swanton iwnum
Review: An Historical Review of a
Notable Physical Medium in the
Tropics: Anna Prado: a Mulher que
Falava com os Mortos' - Ademir
Xavier (pp. 49-511
Welcome to Vol. 3 No. 4, the last issue of Paranthropology
for 2012. It has been a good year for the journal, having
gone from strength to strength, expanding its scope and
content, and getting more people involved in its produc-
tion. The Second Anniversary Anthology has also be a
great success, and I look forward to putting together
more edited volumes in the future.
This issue features contributions from Hillary S. Webb,
who takes a look at quantitative and qualitative ap-
proaches to the study of consciousness through the lens
of Karl Popper's distinction between 'clock systems' and
'cloud systems.' This is followed by a commentary on
Webb's paper from our frequent contributor Mark A.
Schroll, who asks the question of whether humanity is
really ready to possess a 'technical of understanding of
how consciousness works'?
In 'In Search of Higher Intelligence,' creative writer
and essayist Matt Cardin gives an overview of the Dae-
monic cord that links Aleister Crowley, Timothy Leary
and Robert Anton Wilson. Cardin's paper takes bold
steps in considering the ontology of the Daemonic muse,
and I'm sure the reader will find it fascinating.
In 'Magic, Science and Religion (Part 1)' master stage
magician Eugene Burger and myself discuss stage magic
as a means of connecting with existential Mysteries, as
well as exploring the connections between consciousness,
performance, belief and the body. This is the first part of
an on-going dialogue.
Andy Letcher's paper 'Get thee enhurued!: Magic
Mushrooms, Time and the End of the World' critically
examines some of the psychedelic strands of the current
2012 end of the world phenomenon, and in so-doing
presents an alternative way of thinking about psychedel-
ics.
This issue is concluded with a ground-breaking letter,
first published in 1953 in The Journal of Parapsychology by
the anthropologist John R. Swanton (1873-1958), which
calls for anthropologists to take seriously the research and
findings of psychical research and parapsychology. It has
been hugely influential to many, and I'm sure the reader
will be similarly impressed.
The next issue of the journal January 2013), will have
the theme of 'Thinking About Experience.' See page 17
for submission details. Jack Hunter
Vol. 3 NO. 4
3
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Submitted: 28/08/2012
Reviewed: 15/09/2012
Accepted: 15/09/2012
Clock System or Cloud System?:
Applying Popper's Metaphor to the Study of Human Consciousness
Hillary S. Webb
i 1
The question of what human consciousness
"is," how it "works," and what it "does" is cur-
rently being approached by myriad fields of
study, each with their own particular goals and
research techniques. But, despite the undeniably
complex nature of this enigmatic phenomenon,
the prevailing scientific and institutional para-
digm seems to imply that only quantitative, ex-
perimentally focused approaches are a worthy
means of illuminating "truth" about human
consciousness.
In this paper, I begin by borrowing Popper's
metaphor of "clock systems" versus "cloud sys-
tems," applying each to quantitative and quali-
tative inquiry respectively. I make the case that,
as Popper urged when articulating his ideas
about physical determinism, the field of con-
sciousness research must reconsider the possi-
bility that rejecting the "cloud," or qualitative
aspects of consciousness, will lead to a stunted,
incomplete picture of the phenomenon. Taking
examples from my own work as an anthropolo-
gist and from the work of my colleagues within
the field, I offer examples of, and reflections on,
what qualitative research has to offer all of us
who wish to gain insight into human conscious-
ness; in particular, its nature, function, and po-
tential. In response to the one-sidedness within
the field, I urge researchers of all types to con-
sider its "double nature" as a positive quality,
and offer the reminder that no matter what dif-
ferences in our particular goals and research
styles, our meta-mission remains the same: to
illuminate the great mystery that lies in the cen-
ter of our personhood.
Introduction
Not long after finishing graduate school, I at-
tended a large conference at which researchers
from varied disciplines within the experimental
and social sciences had come together to share
vol
their research on human consciousness. Having
just completed my Masters degree and PhD at
two very humanistic universities, I was eager to
get out into the world and share the results of
my research exploring the cross-cultural use of
altered state experiences as an epistemological
tool, one of the main interests of my field, the
anthropology of consciousness. I saw this con-
ference as my opportunity to step up and take
my place as a member of a field dedicated to
adding to our understanding of human con-
sciousness — its nature, function, and potentials.
I had just arrived at the conference — had not
yet even slung my name tag over my head —
when I got into a conversation with a distin-
guished scientist who was there to present a pa-
per on his research into remote viewing. Feeling
excited that I had crossed paths with someone
who likewise had an interest in non-ordinary
ways of knowing, I began to describe plans to
study various sound technologies and their po-
tential for altered state experience using a quali-
tative approach. "Using a qualitative ap-
proach?" he said, with a biting laugh. "Gawd."
Then he rolled his eyes. What the hell? I
thought.
Having just emerged from the supportive
womb of institutions that not only supported
but encouraged the exploration of an individ-
ual's subjective, lived experience as a means by
which one could illuminate the phenomenon of
consciousness, his dismissive — no, contemptu-
ous — reaction startled me. What I learned as
time went on was that this attitude is far from
unusual. The study of human consciousness is a
complex one — perhaps most complex of all sub-
jects of inquiry, for, as it has been said, the hu-
man mind is the only thing in existence trying
to understand itself, and therefore investigating
consciousness is a lot like trying to find your
way through a hall of mirrors, or, perhaps, like a
dog chasing its own tail. The question of what
3 No. 4 4
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
consciousness "is," how it "works," and what it
"does" is currently being approached by myriad
fields of study. But, while philosophers, neuro-
scientists, psychologists, anthropologists, theo-
logians, spiritual leaders, and practitioners of all
kinds can be found investigating human con-
sciousness through the specific lens of each
one's particular discipline, the prevailing para-
digm seems to imply — in both subtle and overt
ways — that only quantitative, experimentally
focused sciences are a worthy means of illumi-
nating truth about the phenomenon of con-
sciousness. Fields like anthropology and certain
branches of psychology that apply descriptive,
first-person investigatory procedures (humanis-
tic and transpersonal psychology among them),
have been marginalized; shunted to the fringe of
an already fringe science.
Almost three years after my encounter at the
conference, I am still surprised at the persistence
of this attitude that qualitative modes of inquiry
are somehow a less valid means of researching
human consciousness. It has led me to wonder:
Are the two approaches to research destined to
be rivals; existing forevermore in separate do-
mains with very little communication between
them? Or can they become interdependent, each
one allowing the other to inform that which is
their common mission? Specific to my own
work: Will qualitative analysis ever be given the
respect that it deserves as a means of coming to
illuminate questions regarding the nature, func-
tion, and potential of human consciousness?
In this paper, I will offer a few reflections on
what qualitative research has to offer all of us
across the field who wish to attain some sort of
insight into the workings of human conscious-
ness — what it is, what it does, and what it may
be capable of beyond our current understand-
ing. I first borrow (and co-opt for my own pur-
poses) scientific philosopher Karl Popper's
metaphor of the distinction between "clock sys-
tems" and "cloud systems" (here equated with
quantitative and qualitative methodological ap-
proaches respectively rather than used as a way
of articulating ideas about physical determinism
as Popper intended) and then, from this, con-
sider the possibility that, as a field, we may be
Vol.3
confusing the "clock problems" of consciousness
with the "cloud problems" of consciousness. I
will offer some examples from recent anthropo-
logical research that exemplifies ways in which
qualitative research offers us essential insight
into this enigmatic phenomenon.
Defining Our Terms
I've noticed that as individual researchers, we
often don't take the time to define what we
mean by "consciousness" when speaking with
one another about our work. I remember one
wine-filled evening in grad school having a
philosophical debate with a fellow student
about some aspect of "consciousness." After
about 45 minutes of trying in vain to convince
each other of the righteousness of our particular
positions, it suddenly dawned on us that each of
us was talking about two entirely different
things, to the degree that we were essentially
comparing apples and oranges. No wonder we
were both so confused at how the other arrived
at her conclusions! Each of us was using a very
different set of parameters for how to approach
the subject matter.
Since then I've taken care to — as much as
possible — define what I mean when I speak or
write about "consciousness." This is not to sug-
gest that I believe that there is, or should be, one
definition for the term (just the opposite in
fact — how can we possibly encompass this
complex phenomenon using one definition or
set of assumptions?), but as a way of being
transparent about my starting point and the ba-
sis of my particular perspective. Agree or dis-
agree, at least whomever I'm speaking with has
an idea of how my own particular relationship
to consciousness informs the work that I do.
And vice versa.
Huxley's (2004/1954) Doors of Perception
has been highly influential in informing my per-
sonal and professional approach to conscious-
ness. In particular, the following passage:
"Each person is at each moment capable of
remembering all that has ever happened
to him and of perceiving everything that is
happening everywhere in the universe.
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Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
The function of the brain and nervous
system is to protect us from being over-
whelmed [by funneling this information
through a "reducing valve"]. What comes
out the other end is a measly trickle [lead-
ing us to believe] that reduced awareness
is the only awareness... Through these
permanent or temporary bypasses [i.e.:
spontaneous altered states, intentional
spiritual exercises, hypnosis, drugs] there
flows... something more than, and above
all something different from, the carefully
selected utilitarian material which our
narrowed, individual minds regard as a
complete, or at least sufficient, picture of
reality" (Huxley 2004 [1954]: 22-23).
Based on that — and also based on the experi-
ences I have had and the research that I have
done in the field — my current definition of con-
sciousness goes something like this:
Consciousness is the process by which the
total sum of experience, information,
knowledge, and understanding become
available to us, both through states of "or-
dinary" awareness and "non-ordinary"
awareness. As human beings we are in
every moment experiencing and being
transformed by the world through both
ordinary and non-ordinary means,
whether we are consciously aware of it or
not.
As I said, I certainly don't consider this the ulti-
mate definition. However, what this definition
reveals is my relationship to the term and, in
particular, my personal and professional inter-
ests when it comes to the study of conscious-
ness. For example, rather than concerning my-
self with what consciousness is — that is, its ul-
timate nature and /or its potential for reducibil-
ity to one essential "thing" — my work focuses
on how human beings experience conscious-
ness, in particular, ways in which altered states
of consciousness can be used to attain practical,
outer-world-relevant knowledge. Given the par-
ticular focus of my research goals, my work fo-
vol
cuses primarily on engaging with the subjective
experience of consciousness and how these ex-
periences transform us and our relationship to
existence. Qualitative inquiry, with its emphasis
on narrative, metaphors, highlighting uncom-
mon connections, the local and nonlocal, causal
and noncausal aspects of a given phenomenon,
is my doorway into knowledge.
Of Clocks and Clouds
In his essay, "Of Clocks and Clouds: An Ap-
proach to the Problem of Rationality and the
Freedom of Man," scientific philosopher Karl
Popper (1966) divided the world into "clock sys-
tems" and "cloud systems."
Clock systems, he explained, are orderly,
predictable, reducible, and mechanistic. They
rely on the linear, causal aspects of existence in
order to function properly. Clock systems keep
the trains running on time. They give us confi-
dence that on our drive to work each morning a
red light will always mean, "stop" and not ran-
domly change to signify "go." As I write this I'm
engaging with the world as a clock system, pay-
ing attention to the linear organization of my
ideas so that (hopefully!) anyone reading this
will be able to follow the progression of my
thoughts (whether they agree or not) and I'll be
able to construct some kind of common mean-
ing. Clock systems keep us all organized and on
the same page. And this is good.
In contrast, "cloud systems" are non-linear,
non-orderly. They are unpredictable, naturalis-
tic, and open to interpretation. While clock sys-
tems are neat and orderly and therefore can be
predicted and "solved" through objective test-
ing, cloud systems often involve the creation of
relationships between two seemingly unlike and
unrelated things. Imagine lying on your back in
the grass looking up at the sky. What shapes do
you see in the clouds? A duck? A seahorse? The
profile of your high school chemistry teacher?
Where does your mind go as a result of the
shapes that you see? What memories? Emo-
tions? Physiological sensations? Cloud systems
are free flowing. They are time and space inde-
pendent. They adapt to the changing environ-
ment and changing circumstances. One cannot
3 No. 4 6
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
generalize using a cloud system approach, for it
is too complex and fluid a system. And this is
good, too.
According to Popper, the mistake of modern
science is to pretend that everything can be ad-
dressed as a clock system; that everything can
be reduced to mechanistic principles and proc-
esses that make everything neat and tidy. But as
I learned that morning at the conference, the
Western epistemological paradigm very much
favors the "clock system" approach (i.e. the Sci-
entific Method) as a means of coming to under-
stand the world and, as we are discussing here,
the phenomenon of human consciousness. Most
scientists seem relatively comfortable holding
the notion that while Newtonian physics is help-
ful in understanding causal, macro-elements of
existence, it cannot be adequately applied to the
quantum, micro-level of existence that plays by
its own set of rules and can only be illuminated
with its own set of research parameters. And
still, the belief that a one-size-fits-all approach to
the study of consciousness continues to endure.
Given the heavy focus on the "clock" ele-
ments of consciousness within this field of
study, I would like to offer some examples of
how approaching consciousness as a cloud sys-
tem — that is, via the qualitative approach — of-
fers us essential knowledge of its nature, func-
tion, and potential.
What It Is, What It Does,
And What It May Be Capable Of
As researchers (or, for that matter, as human be-
ings), what is it that we want to know about
consciousness? Essentially, what we want to
know is: What consciousness is (its nature),
what it does (its function), and what it "super
does" (its potential beyond current consensus
understanding). Experimental scientists of all
kinds have come at these questions using a
quantitative research approach, resulting in es-
sential data that we can turn to when we need to
know "big picture" information, such as how
consciousness tends to act or react within a con-
trolled setting, with certain parameters being
applied to ensure consistency in environment
and circumstance. Thanks to these important
vol.
"clock" studies, we now have much more in-
sight into, and information about, the physio-
logical and behavioral implications of con-
sciousness.
But what about the cloud-like aspects of
consciousness? That is, the aspects of conscious-
ness that are unpredictable and free flowing and
inter-relational? Unlike quantitative research,
qualitative inquiry does not seek the predictable
or the generalizable, but rather is concerned
with enriching our understanding of the human
condition by paying respect to the unity and di-
versity of our inner experiences. Qualitative re-
search locates the individual in the world, con-
sidering and reconsidering a phenomenon in
terms of the significance and meaning that re-
search participant — not to mention the re-
searcher him or herself — brings to it. Qualitative
inquiry enriches our understanding of the hu-
man condition by illuminating and paying re-
spect to the unity and diversity of inner experi-
ence. In the case of anthropology, the goal is to
explore ways in which individual belief and ac-
tion intersect with culture. And for the anthro-
pology of consciousness, the focus is on identi-
fying the relationship between consciousness
and culture — how individuals in a given envi-
ronment relate to and understand conscious-
ness, how they interact with it (for example,
through altered state experiences), and how
these experiences assist the individual in living
their lives. The anthropological study of con-
sciousness is almost always conducted in situ,
within a natural setting, rather than in a labora-
tory or under contrived situations (though most
of us would agree that all research is to an ex-
tent a contrived situation, whether in a lab on in
the field).
What can we learn about human conscious-
ness if we approach it in this way, as a cloud
system existing within a natural setting, and
with qualitative inquiry as the means by which
this phenomenon reveals itself to us? The exam-
ples I give come from my work as former man-
aging editor of Anthropology of Consciousness
journal, and also from my work as an anthro-
pologist exploring indigenous Peruvian ways of
knowing.
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Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
What it is
The question of what consciousness is — that is,
what "thing" it can ultimately be reduced to — is
and has been an enduring debate, one that has,
in general, been split into three camps, each
aligned with a specific ontological viewpoint. In
the middle are those who remain faithful to
Descartes' mind-body dualism; who suggest
that for us to have the experience that we do
(that of being both physical and mental entities),
that the two equally real and irreducible sub-
stances of "mind" and "body" must interface in
some way, even if we don't yet know how. Posi-
tioned on either side of this philosophical prem-
ise are those who believe that the apparent ir-
reconcilability of these two substances means
that one must be a product of the other. Materi-
alists argue that matter is the only true sub-
stance — that all phenomena, including all men-
tal phenomena, can be reduced to being by-
products of physico-chemical processes — while
subjective idealists tend to regard mind as pri-
mary, with matter believed to be an illusion cre-
ated by mind. For many researchers, this ques-
tion of the ultimate nature of consciousness is a
central quest.
Speaking generally, qualitative analysis
tends to be much less concerned with identify-
ing what consciousness "is" as a reducible phe-
nomenon, and instead focuses on how con-
sciousness presents and /or reveals itself within
human experience and how the individual's re-
lationship to the world is formed and trans-
formed through experiences of consciousness.
The way I like to think of it is that while quanti-
tative research tends to relate to the "ultimate
nature" of consciousness as a noun (that is, as a
singularity, as a "thing," whether that be its neu-
rochemical or energetic manifestation), qualita-
tive inquiry responds to consciousness as a verb,
as a moving, changing, action-oriented, and
inter-relational principle. Qualitative inquiry
concerns itself not with what consciousness ul-
timately can be reduced to, but with how its na-
ture is reflected as it interacts within various cir-
cumstances.
In his article entitled "Identity Discourses on
the Dancefloor," Rill (2010) describes the experi-
Vol.3
ence of individuals who regularly participate in
Electronic Dance Music Culture. As he described
it, within the context of these rave dances:
"A vibe is established when a critical mass
is reached— when there are enough people
feeling and giving off 'positive energy' to
create a collective feeling. . . . [T]he egocen-
tric self is replaced by an experiential
model wherein the T is superseded by
'We' and thinking is second to feeling... It
is a somatic experience that silences the
inner language so prevalent in our waking
consciousness, allowing the dancer to live
quite literally 'in-the-moment' ...This uni-
fying energy binds participants into a col-
lective experience" (Rill 2010:144).
What does this passage indicate or suggest
about the potential nature, or ultimate structure,
of consciousness? Based on what is reported in
it, a few suppositions come to mind that are
worth considering:
* Consciousness is fluid. It appears to
move between being thinking-dominant
and feeling-dominant states, depending
on how the individual is engaging with
the world and what circumstance are pre-
sent, both internally and externally.
* In non-ordinary states of awareness
(such as trance dance), consciousness has a
tendency to flow towards a state of com-
munitas or deep communion with others;
to a state in which "we" replaces "I" as the
locus of the individual's identity.
* Time is experienced differently de-
pending what state of awareness one is
engaged with. Within the trance dance
state, time even appears to stop entirely.
This short paragraph gives us much for consid-
eration in regards to how consciousness natu-
rally flows within a certain circumstance. One
might compare the descriptions of individuals
participating in a rave dance with how con-
sciousness is experienced, say, within the ritual
practices of Peruvian shamans who likewise re-
NO. 4 8
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
port that the ceremonial San Pedro experience,
"opens up a connection [between the partici-
pants] that is usually unconscious. The connec-
tion is always there, but often we are not con-
scious of it" (Webb 2012:83).
Qualitative research — and in particular an-
thropological research — can also provide oppor-
tunities to move past our culturally conceived
categories about the nature of human con-
sciousness and consider the question through
another ontological lens. When conducting my
doctoral research into the concept of yanantin, or
"complementary opposites," as the basis of the
indigenous Andean worldview, my research
participants and I fell into a discussion in which
I described to them the Western concern with
the mind-body "problem." To this, one of my
participants responded, "Here, [mind and body]
are two," he said, spreading his fingers apart n a
V. "And they are one," he said, bringing his fin-
gers together. Then he shrugged. "There is no
problem!" (Webb 2012:45).
In the indigenous Andean view, all matter is
in some way alive and has both a material as-
pect and a spiritual-energetic aspect. According
to this conception of it, mind and matter flow so
closely together that they cannot be separated.
In fact, it might be more accurate to say that, in
the end, they are seen not as "two" at all, but a
singular "thing" that simply manifests in differ-
ent forms. Looking at consciousness in this way,
the mind-body problem is not a problem at all,
simply an issue of perspective. The purpose of
this example is not to make an argument that
consciousness is one thing or two. Rather, it is to
suggest that by exploring the lived experience of
consciousness, considering how it appears and
informs a particular worldview within various
naturalistic settings (such as a rave dance, such
as a San Pedro ceremony on a mountaintop in
Peru), we have the opportunity to expand our
definitions and our concepts of what conscious-
ness is. Can qualitative data tell us whether con-
sciousness is matter or energy, or arrive at some
ultimate theory of everything? Likely not, for
this is (again, generally speaking) not its intent
or interest (though it is possible that hints in this
direction might be revealed in this way). What
Vol.3
qualitative inquiry offers us in regard to human
consciousness is a look at its nature as a cloud
system, as a verb, as a complex, changing, en-
gaging process that responds both predictably
and unpredictably to the circumstances in which
it finds itself.
What It Does
In addition to seeking insight into the ultimate
nature of human consciousness, what research-
ers want to know about consciousness is what it
"does." That is, how it functions to support the
individual's existence (or, in some cases, how it
seems to self-destructively turn against the indi-
vidual's apparent best interests). While it is pos-
sible that we may ultimately be energetic or
"spiritual" beings, as biological entities our
number one priority is to survive and thrive
within the social and physical environment in
which we exist. Considering it this way, the data
that qualitative inquiry seeks includes, though is
not limited to, information about how the vari-
ous forms that consciousness takes helps indi-
viduals manage their day-to-day lives — physi-
cally, emotionally, socially, and so on.
In his work with individuals experiencing
altered states through rave dancing, Rill noted:
"Participants [within EMDC] have reported a
'more concrete engagement with life' ... This
feeling carries back to the everyday world ...
For many participants their experiences [within
the rave setting] have radically altered their no-
tions of self and personhood, permanently
changing not only perceptions of the world but
also how people choose to interact with it." (Rill
2010:145-146).
Rill asked: What kind of relationship does
the individual have with the world after these
altered state experiences? What changes occur
as a result — for example, the research partici-
pants' relationships with other human beings
and the world in which they live? In what ways
were these experiences psycho-integrated or
used to support the individuals' day-to-day life?
First-person narratives of such experiences offer
us opportunities to see how experiences of con-
sciousness initiate a re-relationing between the
individual and his or her worldview, both dur-
NO. 4 9
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
ing and after the altered state experience. Many
qualitative methods take this a step further, not-
ing not only how such experiences effect the re-
search participant, but also considering how the
researcher's worldview is likewise changed
through the shared experience of entering into a
particular worldview. In my work in Peru, I
spent much time paying close attention to how
my research participants relate to the world as a
dance of complementarity polarities and how it
influences their relationships to each other,
themselves, and the world around them. But in
addition to playing the role of "objective" re-
searcher, at the insistence of my research par-
ticipants, I also found it necessary to enter this
worldview in a personal, experiential way in
order to attain a tacit sense of the cultural phe-
nomenon of yanantin or "complementary oppo-
sites" (primarily, by going into altered states us-
ing the mescaline cactus San Pedro). By engag-
ing with this cultural phenomenon from both an
emic and etic position, I came to understand to a
greater degree how this cultural concept influ-
ences individuals' relationship to their world
and the contents of their own conscious experi-
ence. Likewise, in his article on rave dance, Rill
commented that, "Drawing upon a decade of
personal involvement, I would suggest that un-
derstanding the EMDC trance experience re-
quires immersion in the act of dancing" (Rill
2010:140). In this way, the relational qualities
promoted by qualitative research encourages a
sharing of experience that allows the researcher
to have a deeper, more encompassing under-
standing of the "doing" of consciousness. And
this sharing of experience reveals something
about consciousness, too.
* Non-ordinary ways of knowing (remote
viewing, psychic abilities, dreams, visions)
* The persistence of consciousness beyond
physical death (near death experiences,
channeling, out-of-body experiences)
* Ways in which consciousness influences
matter (distance healing, psychokinesis,
feats of magic)
In the article "A Shaman's Cure: The Relation-
ship between ASCs and Shamanic Healing,"
Sidky (2009) describes his observations watch-
ing a Nepalese jhakri perform a healing ritual on
a patient (while both patient and healer were in
non-ordinary states of consciousness) in which
the former, claiming to be under the influence of
supernatural beings, inserted his hands in boil-
ing water and then pulled them out, unhurt.
"[The shaman entered] into altered states
of consciousness to harness the power of
the numinous beings for the task at hand.
... [During the trance] arrays of different
types of supernatural beings manifest
themselves in the room ... the shaman
embodies and controls these numinous
entities shaking and trembling violently as
he does so. ... the visibly sleep-deprived
patient, in a transitional state between
sleep and wakefulness, begins to experi-
ence the full force of the [shaman's] pow-
ers. ... [the shaman] demonstrates the
awesome supernatural powers he has
harnessed by inserting his hands into a
cauldron of boiling water and shows eve-
ryone that he is unscathed ..." (Sidky
2009:175-185).
What It "Super Does"
What I mean by what consciousness "super
does" is a question of its potential. That is: What
is human consciousness capable of, beyond our
current understanding of it, or beyond what we
are able to measure? Here we have entered the
realm of the study of anomalous experiences.
For example:
Vol.3
In my work with the shamans of Peru, my focus
was not on anomalous experiences. And yet,
during our discussions, they spoke very matter-
of-factly about their ability to read the future in
a pile of scattered coca leaves, about an experi-
ence they had had watching another shaman
dematerialize in front of their eyes, about their
regular dealings with both dark and light spirits,
and so on. Although, having not experienced
these things firsthand, it is admittedly difficult
i.4 10
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
for me to fully integrate the reality of these re-
ports (and I will be the first to state that this is
my limitation rather than indicating a lack of
truth about their experience), the great respect
that I have for my research participants led me
to trust and even believe the reality of their
worldview and, in particular, the possibility that
consciousness has a greater capacity to interact
with both seen and unseen worlds than I can
begin to conceive.
It is in the realm of anomalous experience
that we may most be blinded by our cultural
preference for identifying existence solely as a
clock system. It seems to me that it is not too
much of a stretch to propose (for certainly others
have proposed it) that perhaps anomalous expe-
riences cannot truly and accurately be engaged
with via "clock" methods. Perhaps just as the
laws of Newtonian physics cannot be applied to
subatomic particles, anomalous experiences de-
serve and require their own set of principles and
procedures. This is not to say that qualitative
research is thus the ultimate answer to the study
of non-ordinary experiences. Rather, I would
argue that what is called for is a mix of both
methods. For just as Popper argued that "All
clouds are clocks — even the most cloudy of
clouds" (Popper 1966:4) and "all clocks are
clouds, to some considerable degree — even the
most precise of clocks" (Popper 1966:6.), I be-
lieve that a only a mix of qualitative and quanti-
tative procedures (and likely some procedures
that we have not even conceived of yet) will
lead us to the "event horizon" of consciousness
in which clock system principles and cloud sys-
tem properties come together to illuminate the
totally of the human experience.
That said, what qualitative inquiry offers us
in regard to anomalous experiences and the po-
tential of human consciousness is a framework
for exploring how these experiences are experi-
enced, understood, and utilized by individuals
for whom experiences such as this are part and
parcel of life — and therefore not considered
"anomalous" at all! This gives us a jumping off
place from which to explore what consciousness
might be capable of, beyond the current reign-
ing paradigm.
vol.
Conclusion
All science, whether social science or experi-
mental science, seeks to uncover truths about
the world. Each has certain goals prompting this
quest and each utilizes certain techniques as a
means of moving towards the fulfillment of
these goals. This is just as true for the study of
consciousness. But despite the various ways of
approaching this tricky subject matter, we
should not forget that the meta-mission of all
consciousness research — both qualitative and
quantitative alike — is the illumination of one of
the greatest mysteries we can conceive of; the
phenomenon within which lies the very essence
of our personhood.
Is consciousness a "clock" system or a
"cloud" system? Personally, I think it is both,
and that, as Popper warned, by relying so heav-
ily on the "clock" aspects of the phenomenon
we have lost opportunities to consider the total
sum of its manifestations. In response to this
one-sidedness, I urge researchers of all types to
consider its "double nature," and to optimisti-
cally view this not as a hindrance to under-
standing, but rather as a means of clearing up
some of our confusion about why consciousness
seems to act like both. The purpose of a multi-
disciplinary approach to the study of conscious-
ness is not to turn a clock system into a cloud
system, or vice versa. Whatever threat each
methodological stance is believed to pose the
other (and I do believe that millennia-old fears
may be at the core of this methodological split)
is unfounded. Instead, I would like to suggest
that, when we pass each other in the hallways,
we wish each other "good work" and perhaps
even open up to the possibility that some day, in
some way, we may together find the event hori-
zon of human consciousness in which its two
manifestations blend so thoroughly as to reveal
the totality of the human condition.
References
Huxley, A (2004/1954). The Doors of Perception &
Heaven and Hell. New York: Harper Peren-
nial.
3 NO. 4
11
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Popper, K (1966). Of Clouds And Clocks: An Ap-
proach To The Problem Of Rationality And The
Freedom Of Man (Issue 2). St. Louis: Wash-
ington University Press.
Rill, B. (2010). Identity Discourses on the Dance-
floor. Anthropology of Consciousness. Vol. 21,
No. 2, pp. 139-162.
Sidky H. (2009). 'A Shaman's Cure: The Rela-
tionship between ASCs and Shamanic Heal-
ing.' Anthropology of Consciousness. Vol. 20,
No. 2, pp. 171-197.
Webb, H. S. (2012). Yanantin and Masintin in the
Andean World: Complementary Dualism in
Modern Peru. Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press.
Hillary S. Webb, PhD., is
the former Managing Edi-
tor of Anthropology of Con-
sciousness, the peer-
reviewed journal of the
Society for the Anthropol-
ogy of Consciousness and
the former Research Direc-
tor at The Monroe Institute.
Having received her un-
dergraduate degree in
lournalism from New York
University, Dr. Webb went
on to earn an MA in Con-
sciousness Studies from
Goddard College and a PhD in Psychology from
Saybrook University. She is the author of Exploring
Shamanism, Traveling Between the Worlds: Conversations
with Contemporary Shamans, and Yanantin and Masin-
tin in the Andean World: Complementary Dualism in
Modern Peru. She lives in Southern Maine.
EXPLORING THE
EKE kEhLM*
OF CONSCIOUSNESS
If you enjoy reading Paranthropology or
find it useful in any way why not con-
sider making a small donation towards
keeping the journal alive and free. Visit:
www.paranthropology.co.uk
For details of how to make a donation.
EDITED BY
DANIEL PINCHBECK
. KEN JORDAN
In Exploring the Edge Realms of Consciousness, a di-
verse group of authors journey into the fringes of human
consciousness, tackling such topics as psychic and
paranormal phenomena, lucid dreaming, synchronistic
encounters, and more.
The book is published by Evolver Editions/North Atlantic
Books.
Featuring contributions from: Dean Radin, David Met-
calfe, Russell Targ, Jennifer Dumpert, Robert Waggoner,
Ryan Hurd, David Luke, Jennifer Palmer, Daniel Pinch-
beck and many more...
For more information, and to read the introduction to the
book, visit:
http://www.realitysandwich.com/exploring_edge_realms_
consciousness_introduction
Vol. 3 NO. 4
12
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Commentary:
Cultural Evolution and Technological Evolution
in Consciousness Studies
Mark A. Schroll
I 1
Hillary S. Webb's paper "Clock System or
Cloud System: Applying Popper's Metaphor to
the Study of Human Consciousness" (this vol-
ume) raises several important concerns. In this
Commentary I offer a few brief replies to Webb,
yet my cursory reply is only a beginning toward
further inquiry and discussion to address the
important concerns she raises. Let us begin with
the concern Webb raises in recalling her encoun-
ter with the researcher who laughed at her deci-
sion to use a qualitative methodology. Those of
us who choose to employ qualitative methods
frequently find ourselves in the position of de-
fending this decision. Webb sums up this defen-
sive posture, telling us:
Fields like anthropology and certain
branches of psychology that apply de-
scriptive, first-person investigatory proce-
dures (humanistic and transpersonal
among them), have been marginalized;
shunted to the fringe of an already fringe
science (Webb 2012:5).
I agree, and have wrestled with this concern for
30 years, summing up my views in "Toward a
New Kind of Science and Its Methods of In-
quiry" (2010a) - I thank Webb for her editorial
assistance on this discussion. I revisited these
concerns in Charles T. Tart's article "Proceeding
With Caution: What Went Wrong? The Death
and Rebirth of Essential Science" (Tart 2012).
(Schroll transcribed and edited this article from
Tart's presentation June 16, 2004, at the 16th In-
ternational Transpersonal Association confer-
ence at the Rivera Hotel, Palm Springs, Califor-
nia, USA, as part of the symposium organized
and moderated by Schroll, "Animism, Shaman-
ism, and Ethnobotany: Ecopsychology's Link
with the Transpersonal." More recently I
Vol.3
summed up these concerns in "Reflecting on
Paranthropology" (Schroll 2012a), and explored
related concerns with John E. Mack, "Shaman-
ism, Transpersonal Ecosophy, and John E.
Mack's Investigations of Encounters with Extra-
terrestrial Consciousness" (Schroll & Mack
2012).
A related concern is what Webb identifies as
the focus on what it is that consciousness does,
or its function. This objectively oriented focus is
often viewed as the hallmark of science, whose
equal achievement is its partnership with tech-
nological applications that have admittedly
produced a wealth of advances we all enjoy.
Allen W. Batteau speaks to these concerns in
Technology and Culture (2010), offering us a pano-
ramic assessment of the pros and cons associ-
ated with technology's influence on culture.
Additionally I have asked myself the question,
where does science's predominant focus on
function and / or objectivity originate? If correct,
the answer I have reached is that it originates
with Descartes' decision to make mathematics
the basis of his new philosophy. Elaborating on
this point with Katie Batten in our "Editor's In-
troduction: Finding and Rediscovering Gaia
Consciousness: Ecofeminism as an Expression of
the Transpersonal Ecosophical Perspective"
(Batten & Schroll 2012), it is our conclusion that:
Quite possibly we may have found our-
selves in an entirely different debate if
Descartes' had said I exist, therefore I feel.
Then instead of mathematics becoming
the foundation of Descartes' new philoso-
phy, with its focus on cognition linked
with rationalism and materialism, the
foundation of Euro-American science
could have been on pure experience, with
its foundation constructed upon the hu-
NO. 4
13
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
inanities, idealism, and romanticism (Bat-
ten & Schroll 2012: 3).
Moreover this predominant focus on function
and objectivity could also explain the orienta-
tion of Euro-American culture and science to-
ward its continuing persistence in perpetuating
the military industrial complex. For a thorough
examination of this point see Batten and Schroll
(2012). I also touch on this concern in Schroll
(2010b) and Schroll (2012a). Given this glowing
review, it should therefore come as no surprise
to hear me say I value and support the way
Webb has chosen to investigate consciousness;
as she tells us:
[R]ather than concerning myself with
what consciousness is — that is, its ultimate
nature and /or its potential reducibility to
one essential "thing"— my work focuses on
how human beings experience conscious-
ness, in particular, ways in which altered
states of consciousness can be used to at-
tain practical, outer-world-relevant
knowledge (Webb, 2012, this volume, p. 6).
[Further clarifying her perspective, Webb
adds that her research:] focuses on engag-
ing with the subjective experience of con-
sciousness and how these experiences
transform us and our relation to existence
(Webb 2012:6).
Summary:
Humankind Is Not Ready to Possess a
Technical Understanding of
How Consciousness Works
To reiterate and clarify the concerns we have
discussed so far, let me state clearly that the
question of "how consciousness works" is some-
thing that I am torn about solving. On the one
hand, to understand the way consciousness op-
erates would be a huge leap forward. Along
these lines, in an interview with Stanley Kripp-
ner, I have offered some theoretical observations
to broaden our views of consciousness studies
(Schroll, 2010b). And yet, I continue to approach
the topic of consciousness studies with caution,
because history tells us every major break-
Vol.3
through in knowledge is first considered as a
weapon. Therefore I have continued to ask
whether or not humankind is morally and ethi-
cally evolved enough, or mature enough, to
possess the knowledge of how consciousness
works? Considering the frequency of aggression
and violence throughout the world, the answer
to this question seems clear, that humankind is
not ready to possess a technical understanding
of how consciousness works. On the other hand,
humankind is crying out for, and expressing its
need of, further knowledge about personal
growth, about empathy, about humanistic and
transpersonal ways of experiencing our way of
being; all of which are approaches to the study
of consciousness that emphasizes wisdom and
compassion. This is what I see as valuable in the
work of Webb and others who share her per-
sonal and professional orientation toward con-
sciousness studies.
Defining Consciousness
And Investigating Ultimate Reality
Beyond this, yet tangentially related to our dis-
cussion so far, are the concerns Webb raises re-
garding the questions "what is consciousness"
(its nature) and "what does it super do" ("its
potential beyond current consensus understand-
ing)" (Webb 2012:7). Beginning with the ques-
tion "what is consciousness," it was in my arti-
cle "Toward A Physical Theory of the Source of
Religion" (Schroll 2005), that I attempted to sum
up what the word consciousness means to me. I
defined consciousness as:
The immediacy of the continually emerg-
ing effort to establish an awareness of the
reciprocal interaction taking place be-
tween the person-the-environment-and-
the fundamental unifying principle bond-
ing this relationship together at any given
moment (Schroll 2001) (Schroll 2005:57).
In referring to "the person," I take the view that
we possess a self-awareness that has free will to
make decisions toward being-in-the-world. By
"environment" I mean both nature and the built
environment and /or the totality of our physical
1.4 14
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
planet that we call Earth. By the "fundamental
unifying principle" I mean something beyond
space-time that serves as a generative process of
organization, and has the ability to bond this
reciprocal interaction of person and environ-
ment together with this generative process at
any given moment. My name for this funda-
mental unifying principle is "the holoflux," a
concept developed by physicist and philosopher
David Bohm. The far-reaching implications of
the holoflux refers to the question that Webb
identifies as "what consciousness super-does."
But any further discussion of the holoflux ex-
ceeds the limits of this commentary, and whose
more extensive inquiry has been taken up in my
article "Clarifying the Holographic Paradigm's
Limits and Understanding Bohm's Representa-
tion of Ultimate Reality — the Holoflux — Bohm's
Participatory Vision of Cosmos and Conscious-
ness." (This article is currently undergoing pub-
lication review for a project under the supervi-
sion of Charles Laughlin).
The Mind/Body Problem and
Encouragement Toward Further Inquiry
Finally to bring a sense of closure to this com-
mentary, and the perplexing inquiry as to what
consciousness is or isn't, necessarily includes (as
Webb reminds us), a discussion of the mind/
body problem. Gregory Bateson in Angels Fear:
Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred (1987), has
astutely summed up this problem as:
the epistemological nightmare of the
twentieth century. It should now be pos-
sible to find a more stable theoretical
stance. We need such a stance to limit the
excesses both of the materialists and those
who flirt with the supernatural. And fur-
ther, we need a revised philosophy or
epistemology to reduce the intolerance
that divides the two camps... Very simply,
let me say that I despise and fear both of
these extremes of opinion and that I be-
lieve both extremes to be epistemologi-
cally naive, epistemologically wrong, and
politically dangerous (Bateson & Bateson
1987:52-53).
Bateson's reference to these extremes that we
associate with the opposite poles of the mind/
body problem have historically grouped them-
selves into two general schools of thought. The
dominant school of thought (which we associate
with Issac Newton) is that all is matter; and that
what we call consciousness or God is nothing
more than a by-product of our brain's neurobi-
ology. Contrary to this school is the view com-
monly associated with Bishop Berkeley, which
argues that all is mind; that everything is an im-
age in the mind of God. Nick Herbert echoed
and clarified Bateson's sentiments concerning
both of these schools, by saying that:
I believe that both visions are illusions...
[and instead represent aspects] of a larger
truth. The world of mind needs matter as
a relatively stable medium in which to ex-
press itself, and the material world needs
mind to make its existence "meaningful."
As for mind-created reality, it's obvious to
me that our technological accomplish-
ments result from the inter-action of a par-
ticular kind of mentality with matter. Our
culture is not entirely material but a co-
creation of mind and matter (Herbert
1993:186).
Moreover all of this commentary's discussion is
an attempt to lay the foundation for our further
inquiry of "the holoflux," Bohm's radical theory
of the implicate order; radical in the sense that
it: 1) returns the focus of our inquiry to the very
roots of the mind / body problem. 2) It provides
us with an alternative worldview capable of
demonstrating that psyche and earth (con-
sciousness and matter) are a continuum, or two
sides of one process, and 3) Despite this alterna-
tive worldview, Bohm's implicate order remains
pluralistic in its epistemology and ontology.
Bohm's implicate order hypothesis therefore
avoids the preference for a worldview that con-
forms to previous exclusive perspectives favor-
ing either matter or mind, and in doing so
avoids the well deserved criticism that Etzel
Cardena ruminates on in his article "On Wolver-
Vol. 3 NO. 4
15
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
ines and Epistemological Totalitarianism" (Car-
dena 2011). Telling us:
the rhetoric of the aggressive psi critic, the
all-believing psi proponent, or the New-
Ager would seem to be, pun intended,
universes apart, they both reveal an epis-
temological totalitarianism that assumes
an all-knowing apprehension about the
nature of reality, intolerance for complex-
ity and ambiguity, and an indictment of
anyone not sharing that view (Cardena
2011:4).
This is a good place to bring our discussion to a
close. It is my hope these comments have of-
fered clarity and encouraged further inquiry
into the mystery of consciousness. A mystery
whose understanding may (if my experience can
be believed as real) eventually help to explain
what I have characterized to the best of my abil-
ity as "An Experience of Dematerialization on
Woodrose Seeds" (Schroll 2012b).
References
Batteau, A. W. (2010). Technology and culture.
Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc.
Batten, K. E. & Schroll, M. A. (2012). 'Editor's
introduction: Finding and rediscovering
Gaia consciousness: Ecofeminism as an ex-
pression of the transpersonal ecosophical
perspective.' Restoration Earth: An Interdisci-
plinary Journal for the Study of Nature & Civi-
lization, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 1-9.
Bateson, G. & Bateson, M. C. (1987). Angels fear:
Towards an epistemology of the sacred. New
York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
Cardena, E. (2011). 'On Wolverines and episte-
mological totalitarianism.' Journal of Para-
psychology, Vol. 75, No. 1, pp. 3-14.
Herbert, N. (1993). Elemental mind: Human con-
sciousness and the new physics. New York:
Dutton.
Vol.3
Schroll, M. A. (2001, December 2). 'Theory Vs
application: The positive and negative im-
plications.' Invited presentation at the An-
nual Meeting of the American Anthropo-
logical Association, Washington, DC.
Schroll, M. A. (2005). 'Toward a physical theory
of the source of religion.' Anthropology of
Consciousness, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 56-69.
Schroll, M. A. (2010a). 'Toward a new kind of
science and its methods of inquiry' Anthro-
pology of Consciousness, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 1-
29.
Schroll, M. A. (2010b). 'The physics of psi: An
interview with Stanley Krippner.' Transper-
sonal Psychology Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 3-
15.
Schroll, M. A. (2012a). 'Reflecting on paranthro-
pology.' In J. Hunter (Ed.), Paranthropology:
Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal.
Bristol, UK: Paranthropology / LuLu Press,
pp. 59-67.
Schroll, M. A. (2012b). 'An experience of dema-
terialization on Woodrose Seeds.' In R.
Dickens, (Ed.), Psychedelic Press, UK.
Schroll, M. A. & Mack, J. E. (2012). 'Shamanism,
transpersonal ecosophy, and John E. Mack's
investigations of encounters with extrater-
restrial consciousness.' Paranthropology:
Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the
Paranormal, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 37-43.
Tart, C. T. (2012). 'Proceeding with caution:
What went wrong? The death and rebirth of
essential science.' Paranthropology: Journal of
Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal,
Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 20-22.
Webb, H. S. (2012). 'Clock system or cloud sys-
tem: Applying Popper's metaphor to the
study of human consciousness.' Paranthro-
pology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches
to the Paranormal, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 4-12.
1.4 16
x 4 fa
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Mark A. Schroll, Ph.D., I
Serves on Paranthropology's
Board and is best known for
his articles on shamanism,
transpersonal ecosophy, and
related inquiries into psychi-
cal phenomenon. Lesser
known is Schroll's 30 year
inquiry into the philosophi-
cal legacy of David Bohm.
The late Werner Leinfellner,
Ph.D., co-founder and for-
mer vice-president of the
International Wittgenstein-Symposium, summed up
my investigation of Bohm by saying, "Schroll has
identified the coming crisis in philosophy and I am
impressed with his courage to have taken on such a
huge and difficult problem. Schroll's personal insider
experience and knowledge of New Age philosophy is
of great advantage for him, but does not hinder him
to stand up against exaggerations, such as neo-
shamanism and the mystic participation cults.
Schroll offers a new holistic aspect of how reason and
body come together in our consciousness, a problem
of interest not only for transpersonal psychology but
also of general interest. His aim to make this idea of
holism accessible to philosophers and scientists who
wish to apply it in their own fields of research has
been accomplished successfully in his dissertation."
The seventh installment of The Daily Grail's anthology series covering hidden
history, fringe science and general Forteana, Darklore Volume VII, is now
available to buy.
The book features: Cat Vincent's continuing examination of the modern mon-
ster meme of 'The Slenderman'. Blair MacKenzie Blake recounts stories of
what he's seen (and how he and Tool drummer Danny Carery have been ar-
rested, and possibly drugged) at Area 51. Mark Pesce explores language as
magic, and magicians as the programmers of reality. Robert Schoch exam-
ines the history of the famous Elizabethan mage, Doctor John Dee. Mike Jay
goes in search of psychedelic mushrooms in Wonderland. Richard Andrews
examines the the ancient mythic theme of the hunting of the White Hart.
J.M.R. Higgs tells of the influence of Discordianism on the British band The
KLF. Jason Colavito throws a skeptical eye over the origin of the 'space
gods'/'ancient aliens' mythology. Theo Paijmans offers a little esoteric Nazi
history for your enjoyment. Paolo Sammut reviews the lifelong work of the
noted occultist, Kenneth Grant. Ray Grasse reveals the significance of the
interplay between science and the imagination, and Greg Taylor tells the
strange (and somewhat chilling) tale of the great Icelandic medium Indridi In-
dridason.
For more info visit:
http://www.dailygrail.com/Darklore/2012/10/Darklore-Volume-7
The January 2013 issue of Paranthropology
will have the theme of
"Thinking About Experience."
Some of the general topics for this issue
will include:
* Different ways of talking about experience
* Different ways of interpreting experience
* How to write about personal and social
experience meaningfully
* Experience as an aspect of consciousness
*The consequences of taking experience
seriously.. .and so on.
The deadline for submissions to the
January issue will be 15th December 2012.
Please see www.paranthropology.co.uk for
submission guidelines.
If you have an idea for an article that you
would like to discuss with the editor please
get in touch via:
discarnates@googlemail.com
Vol. 3 NO. 4
17
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
In Search of Higher Intelligence:
The Daemonic Muse(s) of Aleister Crowley,
Timothy Leary, and Robert Anton Wilson
MattCardin
i 1
Submitted: 22/08/2012
Reviewed: 07/09/2012
Accepted: 07/09/2012
In my eBook A Course in Demonic Creativity, and
at the blog Demon Muse from which it is drawn,
and in the book Daemonic Creativity: A Guide to
the Inner Genius that I am currently developing
from both, I explore the experience and practice
of creativity (especially in relation to writing) as
a felt engagement with an autonomous entity or
intelligence that is separate from the ego. I argue
that deliberately personifying one's creativity in
the mode of the classical muse, daemon, or gen-
ius is a particularly effective tactic not only for
enhancing creativity but for discovering an or-
ganic life direction, vocation, or calling.
I also delve into the obvious and compelling
question of this creative intelligence's ontologi-
cal status. Is the muse, the daemon, the personal
genius — that gravitational center of our creative
energy and identity — truly a separate being/
force /entity with an autonomous existence? Or
are such words, and the experience to which
they refer, simply convenient fictions that serve
as metaphors for the unconscious mind? Obvi-
ously, this is a question that relates to and reso-
nates with many diverse fields of study: relig-
ion, anthropology, esotericism, parapsychology,
and even biology and neuroscience (think of the
muse-like and "sensed presence" experiences
reported by Michael Persinger in relation to his
famous "God machine" experiments). But re-
gardless of the angle of approach, the first thing
we find when we seriously begin to consider the
matter is that arriving at a viable answer will
not be, and cannot be, a straightforward affair,
since we are dealing with an issue whose reality
is bound up with the very subjectivity of we-
who-ask-the-questions. This means that all of
our attempts run us into immediate difficulties,
because whichever side we try to choose — the
daemonic muse as somehow "real" or the dae-
monic muse as mere metaphor — we find that
our thinking, and more fundamentally the na-
ture of our perspective and its elaboration in the
cultural-philosophical worldview that underlies
our thinking, proceeds from presuppositions
that automatically lead us to skirt important is-
sues, ignore certain data, beg crucial questions,
and generally disregard, flatten, and bulldoze
over entire realms of pertinent and potentially
conflicting actualities.
Hence the value of reviewing some of the
various ways in which intelligent individuals
have understood the experience of guidance and
communication from a muse-like source. Of all
the myriad strands in the lively cultural conver-
sation about this issue, it would be hard to iden-
tify a more pertinent — or fascinating (and enter-
taining) — one than the line of influence connect-
ing twentieth-century occultist Aleister Crowley
to psychedelic guru Timothy Leary to counter-
culture novelist — psychologist-philosopher and
"guerilla ontologist" Robert Anton Wilson. The
dividing line between objective and subjective
interpretations of the experience of external-
seeming communication from an invisible
source is highlighted not only in the individual
stories of these three figures, but in the plot-line
that interconnects them with each other. In par-
ticular, Wilson's final "resting point" in terms of
a belief system to encompass the whole thing is
helpful and instructive in any inquiry into the
daemonic muse's ontological status, and can
prove a helpful tonic for dogmatism, because
the outlook that he ended up inhabiting was
more of an anff-belief system that highlighted
and hinged on the irreducible indeterminacy of
any possible answer.
Vol. 3 NO. 4
18
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
The Great Beast and His Holy Guardian Angel
Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was arguably the
most influential occultist of the twentieth cen-
tury, and his relevance to the muse-based, or
daemon-based, approach to writing and creativ-
ity is found in his lifelong engagement with the
idea of the Holy Guardian Angel, which stands
as a specific iteration of the fundamental con-
cept of the muse, daemon, or genius. By the time
Crowley came along, the concept of the Holy
Guardian Angel as a person's presiding spiritual
guide, helper, and exemplar, the accessing of
which was the chief goal of magical or esoteric
work, had already been around for several cen-
turies in Western occult and mystical circles, or
even longer if you factor in its long prehistory in
Neoplatonism and various sister schools of
philosophical mysticism. Crowley himself bor-
rowed the term from an English translation of a
medieval occult text. So there was nothing par-
ticularly original in his use of it, or even in his
fundamental philosophical framing of it. But it
was he who made it central and definitive for
subsequent generations when he founded the
new religion of Thelema and devoted the re-
mainder of his life to explicating and promoting
its principles.
The founding event itself, which Thelemites
still celebrate every year on the spring equinox,
as the Feast of the Equinox of the Gods, was the
writing of Liber AL vel Legis or The Book of the
Law. As the story goes, in April 1904, while
Crowley was on honeymoon in Cairo with his
new wife Rose, the book was dictated to him
over a span of three days by a voice that identi-
fied itself as Aiwass or Aiwaz, messenger of the
Egyptian god Horus. The book became The-
lema' s central scripture, and Crowley identified
Aiwass as his own Holy Guardian Angel. He
also identified the event as a dividing point in
history that signaled the end of the former
"Aeon of Osiris," a period characterized by be-
lief in patriarchal monotheism and all that goes
with it, and the new "Aeon of Horus," whose
guiding ethos would be individual liberty and
the discovery of each person's "True Will" in
communion with his or her own Holy Guardian
Angel.
Vol 3
Interestingly and importantly, Crowley's
championing of Thelema and Liber AL didn't
happen right away in the immediate wake of his
Cairo experience. In fact, initially he was not at
all enamored of the book, and spoke more than
once of the way its ideas were distasteful and
contrary to his own thoughts. Robert Anton Wil-
son and co-author Miriam Joe Hill elaborate on
this briefly in their encyclopedia Everything Is
Under Control: Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-ups,
and their comments again underscore the ques-
tion of what Crowley's experience with Aiwass
"really was":
At first, Crowley did not like the experi-
ence or the book, and managed to largely
ignore them for ten years. After 1914,
however, he felt increasingly under their
spell, and eventually he devoted the rest
of his life to the "mission" the book im-
posed on him. After 1919, he spoke of the
Cairo experience as an encounter with a
superhuman intelligence; one of his disci-
ples, Kenneth Grant, has claimed the
communicating entity emanated from the
i.4 19
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
system of the double star, Sirius, while an-
other student, Israel Regardie, prefers to
say Crowley reached the depths of the
human evolutionary unconscious un-
known to either Freud or Jung. 1
an interpretation of the Angel as a layer or pres-
ence within the psyche. But in the same chapter
he says that even though the words of The Book
of the Law were physically written by him as
"ink on paper, in the material sense," still they
Thelema is erected entirely upon, and around,
the idea of the Holy Guardian Angel. Its central
organizing concept is the necessity for each ad-
herent to achieve the "knowledge and conversa-
tion" of his or her own Angel, and thereby to
discover the aforementioned True Will, a term
that is basically coeval with the idea of a life
mission or divine purpose. The most famous
statement from Liber AL — the oft-quoted "Do
what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" —
was borrowed and modified from Rabelais, but
in Thelema it assumes the radically specific and
transformative meaning of discovering one's guid-
ing daimon and thereby accessing, activating, and
actualizing one's cosmic/ divine destiny. The classi-
cal daimon/ daemon or genius encapsulated the
idea of an invisible spirit that accompanies a
person through life and exerts a kind of existen-
tial gravity or magnetism that evokes experi-
ences in accordance with the divinely ordained
life plan. When Crowley spoke and wrote about
the Holy Guardian Angel, and also, signifi-
cantly, when similar-minded people and organi-
zations in his time did the same — as with the
influential Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,
whose founder was in fact the translator of the
book that provided Crowley with the term
"Holy Guardian Angel" — he was pursuing the
very same thing from a different angle.
His experience is also relevant because his
interpretation of it, which continued to evolve
throughout his lifetime, underscored the ten-
sion, or confusion, between objective and sub-
jective views. Until the end of his life he kept
issuing what seemed to be contradictory state-
ments about the matter. Sometimes he even
planted them side-by-side in the same writing,
as in The Equinox of the Gods (1936), the book
where he tells the story of how The Book of the
Law came to be written. At one point he de-
scribes the Holy Guardian Angel as "our Secret
Self — our Subconscious Ego," clearly favoring
Vol.3
are not My words, unless Aiwaz be taken
to be no more than my subconscious self,
or some part of it: in that case, my con-
scious self being ignorant of the Truth in
the Book and hostile to most of the ethics
and philosophy of the Book, Aiwaz is a
severely suppressed part of me. Such a
theory would further imply that I am, un-
known to myself, possessed of all sorts of
praeternatural knowledge and power. 2
In other words, Crowley says here that the sim-
plest, and therefore the best, explanation is to
consider the Holy Guardian Angel an inde-
pendent intelligence, since the subconscious ex-
planation strains credulity even more.
Four decades after Crowley wrote these
words, in June 1973, Robert Anton Wilson took
"a programmed trip on something an under-
ground Alchemist told [me] was LSD," where
part of the "program" involved listening to a
taped reading of Crowley's Invocation of the
Holy Guardian Angel. As Wilson recounted in
Cosmic Trigger: The Final Secret of the Illuminati,
he achieved, among other experiences, "a rush
of Jungian archetypes, strongly influenced by
the imagery of Crowley's Invocation, but none-
theless having that peculiar quality of external
reality and alien intelligence emphasized by Jung
in his discussion of the archetypes." 3 He also
"laughed merrily at Crowley's joking serious-
ness in telling one disciple, Frank Bennett, that
the Holy Guardian Angel invoked in this ritual
is merely 'our own unconsciousness' and
meanwhile telling another disciple, Jane Wolf,
that the Holy Guardian Angel is 'a separate be-
ing of superhuman intelligence.'" 4 Again, the
paradox or contradiction is deliberate and cen-
tral.
The reference to Frank Bennett, not inciden-
tally, comes from a conversation that Bennett
and Crowley both recorded separately, Crowley
1.4 20
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
in his autobiography and Bennett in his diary of
the time he spent with Crowley in 1921. Bennett
was a British-born Australian who became one
of Crowley's chief disciples, and Crowley wrote
in his Confessions that he once revealed some-
thing to Bennett that shocked him into an initia-
tory experience of his Holy Guardian Angel.
Editors John Symonds and Kenneth Grant filled
in the other half of this story in a footnote to
their edition of the book: "We know from Frank
Bennett's diary what Crowley said to him on
this occasion... Crowley told him that it was all a
matter of getting the subconscious mind to
work; and when this subconscious mind was
allowed full sway without interference from the
conscious mind, then illumination could be said
to have begun; for the subconscious mind was
our Holy Guardian Angel." 5
For our present purposes, perhaps the most
helpful expression of this interpretive tension
comes from Israel Regardie, who served as
Crowley's personal secretary from 1928 to 1932
and went on to become one of the most influen-
tial figures in modern Western occultism. In his
introduction to The Law Is for All, a collection of
Crowley's commentaries on The Book of the Law,
Regardie wrote, "It really makes little difference
in the long run whether The Book of the Law was
dictated to him by a preterhuman intelligence
named Aiwass or whether it stemmed from the
creative deeps of Aleister Crowley. The book
was written. And he became the mouthpiece for
the Zeitgeist, accurately expressing the intrinsic
nature of our time as no one else has done to
date." 6 One is free to disagree with Regardie re-
garding Crowley's prophetic value and insight,
but his basic point — that it doesn't matter
whether one opts for the supernatural or psy-
chological explanation, because the end result is
the same — is worth pondering at length and in
depth by those who seek to navigate a relation-
ship with their own deep creative selves.
The Strange Case of Timothy Leary
The leap from Crowley to Leary and Wilson is,
culturally speaking, a drastic one. It's a leap
from Edwardian and post-Edwardian England
to the America of Woodstock and rock and roll;
Vol.3
from World Wars I and II to the Vietnam era;
from black-and-white movies and the age of ra-
dio to the shimmering visual-electronic culture
of McLuhan's global village. But even so, the
basic theme of perceived guidance and commu-
nication from an invisible, alien presence re-
mains constant. Moreover, the fact that the early
21 st century saw a surge of fresh interest in
Leary' s life and legacy, and also in the general
history of the psychedelic movement and the
possible therapeutic and spiritual uses of psy-
chedelic drugs, only reinforces the pertinence of
attempting to understand the nature of this in-
ternal guidance and its emergence as an alien-
seeming force — something that is characteristic,
as we may non-tangentially note, of many psy-
chedelic experiences.
More than just well-known, the basic outline
of Timothy Leary' s life is legendary. His "first
career," as it were, was as a mainstream psy-
chologist and professor. In the 1950s he taught
psychology at Berkeley and performed research
for the Kaiser Family Foundation, and then,
most famously, he taught at Harvard from 1959
to 1963. Some of this early work has had a last-
ing influence; while serving as head of psycho-
logical research for the Kaiser Family Founda-
tion, Leary came up with a system of analyzing
human personality along two axes, love-hate
and dominance-submission, that produced eight
possible personality types with two subdivi-
sions each. It was a brilliant idea (with roots in
the work of earlier psychologists) that ended up
expressed in a diagram that has come to be
known as the "interpersonal circle" or the
"Leary circumplex." Leary's insights helped to
lay the foundation for what would become the
standard personality tests that are still in use
today, e.g., the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(which is mostly extrapolated from Jung — who
had deeply influenced Leary).
Leary's progressive fall (or ascent, depend-
ing on your perspective) from formal respect-
ability was initiated in 1960 when, encouraged
by the cultural tenor of the time and the specific
incitements of friends and colleagues from both
academia and the emerging counterculture, he
traveled to Mexico and ingested psilocybin
1.4 21
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
mushrooms. Some years later he said, "I learned
more about my brain and its possibilities, and I
learned more about psychology, in the five
hours after taking these mushrooms than I had
in the preceding 15 years of studying, human
research and psychology." 7 When he returned to
Harvard, he enlisted the aid of his colleague
Richard Alpert, who would later achieve fame
as writer and spiritual teacher Ram Dass, to
launch a formal study of the psychological ef-
fects and possible therapeutic uses of psyche-
delic drugs.
The story of how the whole thing spun out
of control is long and fascinating, but the short
version is that after achieving some interesting
and promising initial results — such as an indica-
tion that the integration of psychedelics into the
counseling programs offered to criminal offend-
ers might drastically reduce recidivism rates —
Leary who was naturally antiauthoritarian and
free-wheeling, grew fed up with the constraints
of conventional research, reputation, and re-
spectability, and in 1963 ended up getting fired
from Harvard along with Alpert. The university
shut the research program down, and within a
few years the U.S. government had banned the
use of all psychedelic drugs for any purposes,
scientific or otherwise.
The provocation for the government ban
was traceable at least partly to Leary himself,
who upon his departure from Harvard rapidly
transformed himself into the colorful prophet of
psychedelic liberation that he's best remem-
bered as today. Naturally, this incurred the
wrath of civil authority, and so began a trend
that was eventually epitomized by Richard
Nixon's televised proclamation circa 1970 that
Leary was "the most dangerous man in Amer-
ica."
Irrepressible to the core, Leary refused to
back down, and his life path rapidly mutated
into something like a thriller novel with a plot
involving imprisonment, escape, flight from the
U.S., entanglement with prominent anti-
government groups (e.g., the Black Panthers, the
Weather Underground), kidnapping, flight from
country to country, and eventual return to the
U.S. in 1973, at which point he was thrown back
in prison, first at Folsom and then at the Vacav-
ille California Medical Facility. At Folsom he
was kept in solitary confinement, and also, for a
time, in a cell next to Charles Manson.
It was in those prisons that his story dove-
tailed with our overarching theme of guidance
by the muse / daimon / genius, for it was there
that he began to experiment consciously with
opening himself to thoughts and ideas that, as it
seemed, "wanted" to be expressed through
him — in other words, with channeling. Viewing
the operation as a form of telepathy, and setting
as his goal the contacting of "Higher Intelli-
gence" (his specific term) of an expressly extra-
terrestrial sort, he recruited his wife Joanna, a
fellow prisoner named Wayne Benner, and Ben-
ner's girlfriend, a journalist, to participate. The
resulting writings — Starseed (1973), Neurologic
(1973), and Terra II: A Way Out (1974)— intro-
duced his famous 8-circuit model of conscious-
ness and advanced the idea that life originally
came to earth from outer space, and that hu-
manity is destined by DNA coding and evolu-
tionary impulse to colonize space and return to
the stars for transcendence and fulfillment via
Vol. 3 No. 4
22
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
reunion with the galactic source of our being,
which is none other than the Higher Intelligence
that Leary and his team were in contact with.
To back up a bit and draw a crucial connec-
tion, by this point in his life Leary had come to
see himself as deeply connected to Aleister
Crowley. He had long felt an interest in
Crowley's life and ideas, but by the time he ar-
rived at Vacaville in 1974 this had advanced to a
point where he viewed his own life as a "con-
tinuation" (as distinct from a reincarnation,
since his and Crowley's lives overlapped) of
Crowley and his work. In the words of John
Higgs, author of I Have America Surrounded: The
Life of Timothy Leary, in the early 1970s Leary
came to believe "that his role in life was to con-
tinue Crowley's 'Great Work,' that of bringing
about a fundamental shift in human
consciousness." 8 This was the result of several
mind-blowing events that seemed to indicate a
profound connection to Crowley. Most dramati-
cally, in 1971 Leary and English beatnik artist
and writer Brian Barritt tripped together on LSD
in the Sahara desert at Bou Saada, "City of Hap-
piness," reputedly a site of magical influence. It
was the night of Easter Saturday and Sunday,
and Leary and Barrett witnessed massive celes-
tial imagery and visionary symbolism. A year
later they discovered that some of the things
they had seen and experienced paralleled in ee-
rie fashion a series of visions reported by
Crowley in his Confessions. Unknown to them at
the time of their Sahara experience, Crowley
had engaged in a weeks-long magical ritual in
1909 with the poet Victor Neuberg on the very
same site in the very same riverbed at Bou
Saada. Barritt later wrote that he and Tim were
"pretty freaked out" when they discovered this,
and he speculated about a "mysterious force" in
the form of an "unconscious directive" that had
dictated in parallel fashion the motivations and
even the life events and circumstances of
Crowley-Neuberg and Leary-Barritt across a
span of decades. 9
Augmenting the Crowleyan vibe, in 1972
Leary asked a deck of Crowley-designed tarot
cards, "Who am I and what is my destiny?" and
then randomly cut the deck to the Ace of
Vol.3
Discs — the very card that Crowley had identi-
fied as his own representation. In his autobiog-
raphy, Confessions of a Hope Fiend (a title he chose
as a deliberate blending of Crowley's Confessions
with his Diary of a Dope Fiend), Leary wrote,
"The eerie synchronicities between our lives
[i.e., his own and Barritt's] and that of Crowley,
which were later to preoccupy us, were still un-
folding with such precision as to make us won-
der if one can escape the programmed imprint-
ing with which we are born." 10
It was in the wake of all these Crowleyan
synchronicities that the incarcerated Leary be-
gan his channeling experiments. He approached
them in the full sway of his sense of carrying on
Crowley's planetary consciousness-altering mis-
sion, and in full view of the fact that Crowley
had attempted similar contact with a higher in-
telligence. And although Leary made no men-
tion of the Holy Guardian Angel, his emerging
extraterrestrial hypothesis corresponded with
the views of a subset of Thelemites who thought
contact with one's Holy Guardian Angel was
actually a form of contact with a literal extrater-
restrial intelligence. (Others, by contrast, vehe-
mently insisted and still insist today that such a
view is false, ridiculous, and detrimental.)
Wilson began exchanging letters with Leary
a few month after the commencement of Leary' s
telepathic "transmissions," and later offered a
succinct description of the concrete nature of the
experiments: "The Starseed Transmis-
sions — 'hallucinations' or whatever — were re-
ceived in 19 bursts, seldom in recognizable Eng-
lish sentences, requiring considerable medita-
tion and discussion between the four Receivers
before they could be summarized." 11 What's of
prime interest to us here is that even though the
resulting writings clearly advanced and pro-
ceeded from the extraterrestrial view of higher
intelligence rather than the unconscious or
daemonic muse-based one as such — in Terra II,
for example, Leary asserts the truth behind hu-
manity's long history of belief in higher intelli-
gences (as in religious beliefs), but modifies it in
a science-fictional direction: "The goal of the
evolutionary process is to produce nervous sys-
tems capable of communicating with the galac-
i.4 23
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
tic network. Contacting the Higher
Intelligence." 12 — other things said by other peo-
ple about the Learyan view of communicating
with perceived higher or external intelligences,
and even things said by Leary himself, clearly
link his experiences to a more traditionally
muse-like view.
For instance, in a section of archival footage
featured in the "Summer of Love" episode of
PBS's American Experience series, Leary describes
the LSD experience by saying, "It is a sense of
being in communion with powers greater than
yourself, and intelligence which far outstrips the
human mind, and energies which are very
ancient." 13 There is no indication of the context
or time period in which he said this, but it reso-
nates interestingly with something he told Wil-
son when the latter came to visit him at the Va-
caville prison:
[Leary said] Interstellar ESP may have
been going on for all our history... but we
just haven't understood. Our nervous sys-
tems have translated their messages in
terms we could understand. The "angels"
who spoke to Dr. Dee, the Elizabethan
scientist-magician [who had figured in
both Crowley-Neuberg's and Leary-
Barritt's visionary experiences in the Sa-
hara], were extraterrestrials, but Dee
couldn't comprehend them in those terms
and considered them "messengers from
God." The same is true of many other
shamans and mystics. 14
Note that despite the outrageous-sounding na-
ture of such speculations to the modern secular-
materialist ear, Leary was not insane. Or at least
that was the medical-psychological opinion of
the mental health professionals who evaluated
him, according to Wilson:
It should be remembered, in evaluating
the Starseed signals, that, a few months
before this experiment, three government
psychiatrists testified (at the escape trial)
that Dr. Leary was perfectly sane and pos-
sessed of a high I.Q. Since so many ex-
Vol. 3 NO
tremists of Left and Right have impugned
Leary' s sanity, it should also be entered in
the record that Dr. Wesley Hiler, a staff
psychologist at Vacaville who spoke to Dr.
Leary every day (often to ask Tim's ad-
vice), emphatically agrees with that ver-
dict. "Timothy Leary is totally, radiantly
sane," he told me in a 1973 interview. 15
Nor was Hiler's judgment made in ignorance of
the telepathy / channeling experiments that
Leary was engaged in. In fact, Wilson says Hiler
regarded Leary' s project from an informed long-
historical/ psychological view, and Hiler's actual
words resonate wonderfully with the vibe of
ontological uncertainty that we are exploring
here:
I asked Hiler what he really thought of Dr.
Leary's extraterrestrial contacts. Specifi-
cally, since he didn't regard Leary as crazy
or hallucinating, what was happening
when Leary thought he was receiving ex-
traterrestrial communications? "Every
man and woman who reaches the higher
levels of spiritual and intellectual devel-
opment," Dr. Hiler said calmly, "feels the
presence of a Higher Intelligence. Our
theories are all unproven. Socrates called it
his daemon. Others call it gods or angels.
Leary calls it extraterrestrial. Maybe it's
just another part of our brain, a part we
usually don't use. Who knows?" 16
Bob Wilson's Excellent Adventure
As already indicated by the above discussions,
Wilson resonated with the ideas of both Leary
and Crowley, and was in direct contact with the
former during the Starseed period. He even
helped Leary in the crystallization and promul-
gation of his 8-circuit model of consciousness;
although the model was first laid out by Leary
in Neurologic (1973) and Exo-Psychology (1977),
Wilson gave it an energetic and entertaining
publicity boost, and also provided a work of
genuine substance, in his 1983 book Prometheus
Rising, which featured an introduction by for-
mer Crowley secretary Israel Regardie. So it is
4 24
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
no surprise that in addition to being aware of
and interested in Crowley's and Leary's experi-
ences in communicating with angels and aliens,
Wilson had his own encounters with "higher
intelligence."
The primary account of it is found in his
Cosmic Trigger (1977; later retitled Cosmic Trigger
I when Wilson wrote two sequels). Richard
Metzger zeroes in on the emotional heart of the
matter when he writes that, notwithstanding the
trippy and subversive delights of Wilson's fa-
mous Illuminatus! trilogy (co-written with Rob-
ert Shea), "Cosmic Trigger was different. This
time the mask came off. In this book, Wilson
came clean, in the most intellectually honest
way that anyone ever has, on the subject of
'What happens when you start fooling around
with occult things? What happens when you do
psychedelic drugs and try to contact higher di-
mensional entities through ritual magick?'" 17
Wilson, who had a Ph.D. in psychology, con-
textualized the book's content in a valuable in-
troduction that he wrote for a new edition pub-
lished in 1986. "Cosmic Trigger," he explained,
"deals with a process of deliberately induced brain
change through which I put myself in the years
1962-76. This process is called 'initiation' or 'vi-
sion quest' in many traditional societies and can
Vol. 3 NO.
loosely be considered some dangerous variety of
self-psychotherapy in modern terminology." 18 In
the course of this "initiation" he came into per-
ceived contact with a number of external-
seeming intelligences and was thrust into the
same surreal world that Leary and Crowley had
likewise explored.
The high point emerged from his commenc-
ing a new "course of neuropsychological ex-
periments" in 1971, in response to the feeling
that he had deciphered a hidden message in
Crowley's The Book of Lies. "The outstanding re-
sult," he wrote, "was that I entered a belief sys-
tem, from 1973 until around October 1974, in
which I was receiving telepathic messages from
entities residing on a planet of the double star
Sirius." 19 Although Wilson never describes any-
thing like the experience of supernatural dicta-
tion that resulted in Crowley's The Book of the
Law, or like Leary's experience of extraterrestrial
telepathy that resulted in the Starseed books, the
question of his supposed Sirius contact, and of
the general idea of psychic contact with alien-
seeming forces or entities, dominates the bulk of
Cosmic Trigger and forms the guiding thread of
Wilson's journey through "Chapel Perilous," his
term, borrowed from Arthurian legend, for the
frightening and transformative state of psycho-
4 25
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
logical uncertainty in which the walls of a per-
son's belief system have been broached by the
intrusion of events that seem equally amenable
to paranormal and naturalistic, or supernatural
and non-supernatural, explanations.
In describing the various synchronicities and
paranormal events that began to unfold in his
life, Wilson forcefully foregrounds the questions
of ontology and epistemology — of what's really
real and how or whether we're even capable of
making that determination — and he describes
various reversals and mutations in his own
viewpoint. For example, he explains how it was
a meeting in October 1974 with Dr. Jacques Val-
lee, the internationally renowned astronomer
and UFOlogist, that led him away from the be-
lief that he (Wilson) was literally receiving tele-
pathic transmissions from Sirius. Wilson says
Vallee told him this type of other-worldly com-
munication is a centuries-old phenomenon "and
will probably not turn out to be extraterrestrial,"
since the extraterrestrial slant can be chalked up
to the influence of modern cultural beliefs. In
former eras, Vallee said, "The phenomenon took
other and spookier forms." 20
Wilson says Vallee' s viewpoint
made perfect sense to me, since I had
originally gotten in touch with "the en-
tity" by means of Crowleyan occultism.
The extraterrestrial explanation was not
the real explanation, as I had thought; it
was just the latest model for the Experi-
ence, as angels had been a model for it in
the Middle Ages, or dead relatives speak-
ing through mediums had been a model in
the nineteenth century." 21
in all capital letters, "I DO NOT BELIEVE
ANYTHING." 22 In explaining this position over
several pages, he quoted approvingly Alan
Watts's characterization of the universe as "a
giant Rorshach [sic] ink-blot" and described his
own position as "neurological model agnosti-
cism — the application of the Copenhagen Inter-
pretation beyond physics to consciousness it-
self." 23
Most significant for the question of the dae-
monic muse and its ontological status are his
specific thoughts about the status of all invisible
entities / intelligences that are encountered in
psychic space:
Personally, I also suspect, or guess, or in-
tuit, that the more unconventional of my
models here — the ones involving Higher
Intelligence, such as the Cabalistic Holy
Guardian Angel or the extraterrestrial
from Sirius — are necessary working tools at
certain stages in the metaprogramming
process [i.e., the process of accessing and
altering one's fundamental psychological
imprints]. That is, whether such entities
exist anywhere outside our own imagina-
tions, some areas of brain functioning
cannot be accessed without using these
"keys" to open the locks. I do not insist on
this; it is just my own opinion. 24
With this, we're back once again to Crowley and
his continual dance on the edge of mutually ex-
clusive interpretations. "I don't believe any-
thing," Wilson insisted, and so did Crowley and
Leary at least in spirit. The question at hand is:
Can we learn anything from this?
This framing of all belief systems in relativistic
and provisional terms — an attitude that, as we
might do well to notice, is implicit in the very
concept of a "belief system" itself, since to rec-
ognize belief systems as such automatically
subverts the unreflective and wholesale adop-
tion of any of them — became for Wilson the
touchstone of his entire outlook. He began that
new preface to Cosmic Trigger, written ten years
after the book's first publication, by proclaiming
Vol. 3 NO.
Angels, Daemons, and Haunted Artists
For our specific purpose here, what's valuable in
the stories of Crowley, Leary, and Wilson is the
vivid picture they show us of people struggling
to interpret and live with forces in the psyche
that really do present themselves as independ-
ent of the ego and possessed of their own intel-
ligence and will. As already mentioned, the
Holy Guardian Angel and its supernatural and
extraterrestrial kin are explicitly connected in
4 26
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
historical-cultural-conceptual-psychological
terms to the ancient muse, daimon, and genius,
and a Wilsonian attitude of thoroughgoing
"neurological model agnosticism" toward them
only removes categorical interpretations of
what's happening in the perceived experience of
inner communication, not — not — the fact of the
experience itself. Regardless of what we think or
how we feel about it, this experience of being in
perceived contact with a "higher intelligence"
really did happen to these three men. It really
has happened to people throughout history.
And it really can happen to you and me. It
doesn't necessarily mean audible voices and
telepathic transmissions, but it definitely means
a sense of something impinging on or commu-
nicating with our conscious self "from the out-
side," or perhaps from the deep inside, which
experientially amounts to the same thing. The
really electrifying jolt comes when we realize, as
our three present case subjects all did, that such
impinging and communicating is always hap-
pening, regardless of whether or not we're con-
sciously aware of it, as a constant psychic un-
dercurrent. If we're skilled and sensitive enough
to tune in and hear it, the rewards in terms of
creative vibrancy can be exquisite.
Entirely aside from all of the far-out details
of his (possibly) paranormal experiences, at least
twice in his life Wilson directly equated the
autonomous-feeling force in the psyche that
drives artistic creativity with the ontologically
indeterminate Higher Intelligence that seem-
ingly communicated with him, Leary, and
Crowley. One of these instances came in an es-
say he wrote about the life and work of Ray-
mond Chandler, under the pseudonym of one of
his (Wilson's) own fictional creations, book critic
Epicene Wildeblood. In describing the 15-year
hiatus from fiction-writing that Chandler once
experienced, Wilson said, "Chandler spent 15
years, the prime years of a man's life, in the oil-
executive game before the Daemon or Holy Guard-
ian Angel that haunts artists got its teeth into him
again." 25
The other instance is found in a 1981 inter-
view Wilson gave to the late, great genre maga-
zine Starship: The Magazine about Science Fiction.
Vol.3
The interviewer asked him, "Is a book fully or-
ganized in your mind before you start writing or
does it take shape as it unfolds?" Wilson re-
sponded:
Sometimes I have a clearer idea of where
I'm going than other times, but it always
surprises me. In the course of writing, I'm
always drawing on my unconscious crea-
tivity, and I find things creeping into my
writing that I wasn't aware of at the time.
That's part of the pleasure of writing. Af-
ter you've written something, you say to
yourself, "Where in the hell did that come
from?" Faulkner called it the "demon"
that directs the writer. The Kabalists call it
the "holy guardian angel." Every writer
experiences this sensation. Robert E.
Howard said he felt there was somebody
dictating the Conan stories to him. There's
some deep level of the unconscious that
knows a lot more than the conscious mind
of the writer knows. 26
The unconscious mind? The daemon? The Holy
Guardian Angel? All and none of the above? For
purposes of accessing and aligning with the ex-
perience of creative inspiration, does it really mat-
ter?
1 Robert Anton Wilson and Miriam Joan Hill,
Everything Is Under Control: Conspiracies,
Cults, and Cover-ups (New York: HarperCollins,
1998), 134.
2 Tim Maroney, "Six Voices on Crowley," in
Richard Metzger, Book of Lies: The Disinforma-
tion Guide to Magick and the Occult (New York:
The Disinformation Company Ltd., 2003), 168-
9.
3 Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger: The
Final Secret of the Illuminati (Tempe, AZ: New
Falcon Publications, [1977] 1991), 83.
4 Ibid., 84.
i.4 27
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
5 Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleis-
ter Crowley: An Autohagiography (New York,
Penguin Arkana: 1989), 936, n. 4.
6 Quoted in Lawrence Sutin, Do What Thou
Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 2000), 133.
7 Ram Dass: Fierce Grace, directed by
Mickey Lemle (Zeitgeist Films, 2001), Netflix.
8 John Higgs, "The High Priest and the Great
Beast," Sub Rosa 4 (March 2006): 15,
http ://download. daily grail, com/ subrosa/SubRosa
_Issue4-Single.pdf.
9 Brian Barritt, The Road of Excess: A Psy-
chedelic Autobiography (1998), excerpted in
Book of Lies, 155, 152.
10 Ibid., 153.
11 Cosmic Trigger, 105.
12 Timothy Leary, "Starseed: A Way Out,"
excerpted from Terra II: A Way Out (Starseed, A
Partnership: 1974), reprinted in Brad Steiger and
John White, eds., Other Worlds, Other Universes
(Pomeroy, WA: Health Research Books, [1975]
1986), 15.
13 "Summer of Love," American Experience,
PBS, transcript,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/love/filmmore/pt
.html.
14 Cosmic Trigger, 118.
15 Ibid., 104-5.
16 Ibid., 163.
17 Richard Metzger, Disinformation: The In-
terviews (New York: The Disinformation Com-
pany Ltd., 2002), 14.
18 Cosmic Trigger, ii (Wilson's emphasis).
19 Ibid., 8.
Vol.3
20 Cosmic Trigger, 9. The veracity of Wil-
son's recollection here is supported by the fact
that Vallee himself said largely the same things
in his 2010 book Wonders in the Sky: Unex-
plained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern
Times.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., i.
23 Ibid., iv.
24
Ibid.
25 Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminati Pa-
pers (Berkeley: Ronin Publishing, 1980), 127,
emphasis added.
26 Jeffrey Elliot, "Robert Anton Wilson:
Searching for Cosmic Intelligence," Starship:
The Magazine About Science Fiction, Spring
1981, accessed May 19,2011,
http://www.rawilsonfans.com/articles/Starship.ht
m.
Matt Cardin is a writer and
college teacher living in Cen-
tral Texas. He has a master's
degree in religion and a life-
time of involvement in the
study of world religion and
I philosophy. Since the 1990s he
has focused his research and
writing on the intersection of
religion and spirituality with
V supernatural horror. He is the
' author of Divinations of the
Deep (print edition 2002;
ebook 2011), which launched the New Century Macabre
fiction imprint for Ash-Tree Press; Dark Awakenings (2010),
praised by Publishers Weekly as a "thinking-man's book of
the macabre" with "unusual philosophic depth"; and Dae-
monic Creativity: A Guide to the Inner Genius (forthcom-
ing), which he developed from his blog Demon Muse,
where an abridged version titled A Course in Demonic
Creativity is presently available for free download. He has
appeared as a panel expert at The World Fantasy Conven-
tion, The World Horror Convention, MythosCon, and Ar-
madilloCon, and has been a guest on Darkness Radio, Spiri-
tually Raw, the Mancow Muller Show, and other podcasts
and radio shows to talk about his experiences with sleep
paralysis and nocturnal assault, and to discuss their impli-
cations for our collective understanding of creativity, psy-
chology, and reality. In 2008 he was a guest of honor at Mo-
Con III: The Intersection of Art, Spirituality, and Gender.
NO. 4 28
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Magic, Science and Religion:
A Conversation With Eugene Burger (Part 1)
Jack Hunter
i 1
JH: In addition to performing and writing
about stage magic, you have stated that the
study of religion is one of your main interests,
and you have taught college courses on com-
parative religion. What is it about magic and
religion that interests you?
EB: First, I believe there was a time when magic,
religion and science were not seen as separate
areas, as they are today. My friend, Dr. Ricardo
Rosenkranz says that magic and medicine share
a common DNA. The same is true with magic
and religion. There was a time when they were
not seen as completely separate activities. What
appeals to me about them? It is definitely the
sense of Mystery that each brings to us. Magic
and religion both point us to the capital "M"
Mystery of life.
JH: When you use the term 'magic' are you re-
ferring specifically to stage magic, or are you
referring to traditional beliefs? Do you see a
connection between stage magic and tradi-
tional magical beliefs?
EB: I am referring to theatrical magic primarily
rather than what I will call (for lack of a better
phrase) ceremonial magic. But I believe ceremo-
nial magic stands behind stage or theatrical
magic. Put another way, stage magic points to
ceremonial magic for part of its meaning. You
might find it interesting that I would follow my
friend Bob Neale who believes that behind both
ceremonial and theatrical magic is what he calls
"life magic." Bob gives two examples of life
magic. First, imagine the baby begins crying at 5
am in the morning. What do you do? Well, you
pick up the baby and hold it and say, "It's all
right." But, honestly, it isn't all right! It is 5 in
the morning and you have to go to work and the
baby is crying! But you say, "It's all right," and
eventually the baby quiets down. Metaphori-
cally, we might say that the magic words have
worked; they have been successful. Second, Bob
worked with dying patients during his last
years in the academic world, teaching Psychia-
try and Religion at Union Theological Seminary
in New York City. With many dying patients,
who might be afraid, or even barely conscious,
what do we do? We take their hand and say,
"It's all right." Again, this is life magic — using
the word or touch to achieve real world ends.
JH: So, would I be right in saying that your
view on ceremonial magic, and presumably
also religion, is that it serves an essentially
psychological function in allowing people to
think that "It's All Right" even when it isn't?
Do you think this is a sufficient explanation,
or could there be something more to it?
Vol. 3 NO. 4
29
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
EB: No, I do not think that magic or religion
serve an "essentially psychological function."
This may be part of what both do but it is surely
not the entire story. Magic and religion also
serve sociological functions (finding a group in
which one feels safe and honoured, etc.) As I
said, I think theatrical magic points us to the fact
that we are living in the middle of an immense
Mystery. I think this metaphorical or symbolic
function is at the core of both magic and relig-
ion.
JH: I agree. Psychological and sociological
functions are almost certainly factors, but are
not complete explanations in themselves.
There is something else going on, something
more profound. I wonder whether we can ex-
plore this Mystery a little deeper. Could you
describe how, in your opinion, theatrical magic
points us towards the immense Mystery? What
is it about performing illusions that reveals the
Mystery?
EB: Words are difficult here, speaking about
mystery. My use of the word "points," of course,
is a metaphor. I might have used other words or
phrases such as "suggests" or "reminds us of."
The use of such words is to communicate the
idea that the little mystery of the magic trick can
have some connection in the mind with the
larger, capital "M" Mystery of the Universe.
Part, but not all, of this larger Mystery can be
expressed with questions such as, "Why is there
something and not nothing? Why is there any-
thing at all?" And, I might add, I do not believe
this happens very often for audiences or for eve-
ryone in an audience. In the same way, being
deeply moved by a painting or a play deeply
moved in our very existence, probably is also
rare. If we are rushing through the art gallery,
for example, we probably won't be deeply
moved by too many paintings. All art seems to
require an openness on our part if there is to be
a deep engagement at all.
JH: I wonder now whether we can talk a little
about the smaller, but no less intriguing, mys-
Vol.3
teries of the so-called paranormal. What is
your opinion on the phenomena labeled as
"psi" by parapsychologists (including, for ex-
ample, telepathy, psychokinesis, and so on)?
Do you think there is evidence for these phe-
nomena?
EB: I am open to psi phenomena but I neither
affirm nor deny it. I think that I am a skeptic
who does not have the answers. So many so-
called skeptics are, in my view, really debun-
kers. They have already come to a definite deci-
sion. Sometimes I think of them as being fun-
damentalists turned inside out.
JH: Do you think that a knowledge of stage
magic can help us to understand the nature of
ostensible psi phenomena?
EB: I'm not sure theatrical magic tells us much
about the nature of ostensible psi phenomena. A
good deal of theatrical magic, of course, seeks to
create the illusion of various psi phenomena.
Theatrical magic creates the illusion of telepathy
or telekinesis and so I do think that a knowledge
of theatrical magic is certainly of use to investi-
gators if they are going to be successful at catch-
ing psi cheaters.
JH: I have been thinking quite a lot, in the con-
text of my PhD research into trance medium-
ship practices, about the role of performance in
mediumship, not in the sense of "mediumship
is a performance therefore it is fraudulent," but
in a more open ended manner whereby per-
formance is seen as a particular technique for
the 'manifestation of spirits.' Similarly, there
seems to be a performative aspect to traditional
forms of shamanism, employing sleight of
hand and so on, which were important factors
in bringing about genuine cures for illnesses.
The parapsychologist Kenneth Batcheldor
found, in his experiments with table-tipping,
that if he introduced 'artefacts' (fake levita-
tions) early on in the experiment, 'genuine'
levitations would be more likely to occur later
on. He put this down to the idea that it is the
'instant belief of the experimental participants
1.4 30
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
that is necessary for the manifestation of psi,
and that seeing apparently paranormal phe-
nomena increased this instant belief, thus
leading to stronger manifestations. It seems to
me that there might be a deep connection be-
tween performance, belief and manifestations
of psi phenomena.
EB: And a connection with healing generally.
What is the relation between one's belief state
and being healed? Expectation is a powerful
tool. In theatrical magic, I want to awaken your
inner sense of expectation and use it to my ad-
vantage in deceiving you.
And, yes, I think it is important that we do
not begin our investigations with the assump-
tion that all psi phenomena must be fraudulent.
That, as I said earlier, is fundamentalism turned
inside out. It has no place in the academy and
yet this view seems deeply entrenched there.
Why wouldn't experiencing the Shaking
Tent, or some other shamanistic demonstration,
lead one to have more trust in the shaman's
pronouncements - including pronouncements
about one's health and healing?
At the same time, I really believe that for
many people in the group these demonstrations
involving sleight-of-hand or other trickery were
seen in a totally naturalistic way: they were seen
as theatrical demonstrations to impress and
teach the young of the group and not super-
natural events at all. Many might even have
reached the critical stage where they compared
last year's Shaking Tent with this year's - and
found this year's performance a bit lacking! We
must not assume that everyone who witnessed
them interpreted these demonstrations in the
same way.
End of Part 1. To be continued in Vol. 4 No. 1.
Eugene Burger is an American
magician. He was born in 1939 and is
based in Chicago, Illinois. He is
reputed for his close-up skills and his
work in mentalism and bizarre magic.
He is also a philosopher and a
historian of religion.
Vol.3
Jack Hunter is an PhD student in Social
Anthropology at the University of Bris-
tol. His research looks at
contemporary trance mediumship
in Bristol, and focusses on themes of
personhood, personality, altered states
of consciousness and anomalous
experience.
AnthroDOlogR
Approaches I
to Hie 1
■Paranormal I
Edtl
Jack Hil
The Paranthropology
Second Anniversary
Anthology, featuring
contributions from:
Robert Van de Castle, Jack
Hunter, Lee Wilson, Mark A.
Schroll, Charles D.
Laughlin, Fiona Bowie,
James McClenon, Fabian
Graham, Serena Roney-
Dougal, David E. Young,
David Luke & Michael
Winkelman
Available to Order in Hardback. Just visit:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/edited-by-jack-hunter/paranthropology-anth
ropological-approaches-to-the-paranormal/hardcouer/product-2027247
4.html
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
'Get thee enhurued!': Magic Mushrooms,
Time and the End of the World
Andy Letcher
Reviewed: 14/08/2012
Accepted: 14/08/2012
From The Day the Earth Stood Still to Planet of the
Apes and 2022, Hollywood has long enjoyed un-
settling us with end-of-the-world movies. But if
a growing body of opinion is to be believed we
are literally heading towards an apocalypse, a
time of massive planetary upheaval and eco-
logical calamity that will herald the collapse of
civilization as we know it. Fasten your seatbelts,
for, as Hollywood correctly surmised, this earth-
shattering event is set to occur on December 21st
2012. But fear not. The crisis may yet yield a
spiritual awakening, a revolutionary expansion
of consciousness that will implement a radical
shift in human understanding and auger the
next stage of human evolution.
The 2012 movement is gathering consider-
able momentum, so much so that NASA have
been moved to release a video calming public
concern over some of its wilder claims. Advo-
cates of 2012 can be found amongst the usual
hippy and psychedelic subcultures, New Age
spiritualities, green and anti-capitalist groups,
but also beyond, with their ideas receiving some
celebrity endorsement (George Lucas, Woody
Harrelson, Emile Heskey, Ashton Kutcher and
Sting are all rumoured to be on board).
This wave of popularity is attributable in no
small part to writer and psychedelic 'guru,'
Daniel Pinchbeck, author of the seminal Breaking
Open the Head (2003), who has latterly become
one of the leading advocates of 2012. In his most
recent book, 2022: The Return of Quetzalcoatl,
Pinchbeck (2006) describes a psychedelic encoun-
ter with the eponymous deity, the plumed ser-
pent god of Mesoamerican antiquity, warning
him of the impending apocalypse. A follow up
film, 2022: A Time for Change, directed by Joao
Amorim (2010), develops the theme: global capi-
talism is delivering us to an ecological catastro-
phe that only an evolutionary shift in human
consciousness will avert. The judicious use of
Vol. 3 NO
—I
psychedelics and a return to indigenous, sha-
manistic lifeways - not to mention some ingen-
ious solutions to sustainable living - are what
will hoy us across the abyss. In other words,
knowledge and practices that are forbidden in
the modern West will prove themselves invalu-
able in the end, and may even provide the key
to our salvation.
While I support the view that psychedelic
shamanism could have a more universal value
beyond the confines of the indigenous cultures
where it originates, I remain far from persuaded
by 2012. In this essay I want to explain why I
think 2012 is an unnecessary and damaging ac-
cretion to the psychedelic cause, one that un-
dermines its foundational epistemological claim
that the drugs and the visions add up to some-
thing more than an escapist and solipsistic joy-
ride. If champions of psychedelic revelation ab-
rogate reason (and there is much in 2012 to sug-
gest that they have) then the movement ossifies
into an 'ism' - 'entheogism' - with a narrow and
unquestioning set of orthodox truths. It becomes
a religious movement. To remain a paragnostic
philosophical tool, psychedelic insight requires
critical self-examination. It requires reason. As
Iain McGilchrist reminds us, in matters concern-
ing consciousness, the brain, culture and history
'it behoves us to be sceptical' (McGilchrist 2009:
7).
Furthermore, 2012 remains hidebound to old
Judaeo-Christian, apocalyptic ways of thinking,
botoxed and wheeled out for the twenty-first
century. It rests on a very Western conception of
time as an arrow, as something with aim, pur-
pose and direction, that is taking us somewhere
definite. Following French mathematician and
philosopher, Henri Bergson (1859-1941), I will
argue that this is a misconception, one that nec-
essarily falls out of the inadequacies of lan-
guage. The only way we can truly grasp time,
which remains mysterious, is, as it were, side-
4 32
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
ways, through metaphor and intuition. Our in-
ability to conceive time is neither cause nor ori-
gin of our modern predicament, but I want to
suggest that a more pagan outlook might prove
the antidote to worn out millenarian thinking
and provide a more sustainable psychedelic
framework than that which is currently in fash-
ion.
The Origins of 2012
In True Hallucinations (1993) the late Terence
McKenna (1946-2000) relates the story of an ex-
pedition he made in 1971, together with his
brother Dennis and several friends, to the Co-
lumbian Amazon rainforest in search of parag-
nosis - knowledge by other means. He was not
disappointed. After considerable experimenta-
tion with the local and abundant psilocybin-
containing magic mushrooms, and some seri-
ously weird encounters with UFOs and alien
intelligences, he returned home to California
with a theory. Bolstering his ideas with the
heavyweight 'process philosophy' of Alfred
North Whitehead (1861-1947), and the Gnostic
bioethics of Hans Jonas (1903-1993), McKenna
eventually made his theory public in a book co-
written with his brother, The Invisible Landscape
(1993 [1975]), the main thrust of which goes as
follows.
Over its long history the universe has be-
come steadily more complex, undergoing many
spasmodic "ingressions of novelty" (McKenna
1991: 113): the formation of stars then planets,
the emergence of life, the evolution of language
and consciousness. These sudden, shuddering
leaps of complexity or concrescence occur with
mathematical regularity, according to a predict-
able, fractal pattern called 'the timewave' (a pat-
tern that Terence derived from the structure of
the King Wen sequence of hexagrams of the an-
cient Chinese divination system, the I Ching). A
'best fit' approach enabled McKenna to map the
timewave on to real historical events, yielding
the result that the next large, and perhaps final,
ingression of novelty would occur on December
21st 2012. Quite what that ingression would
bring was unclear and could not be predicted,
but McKenna tended towards the view that
mind would liberate itself from matter, the con-
clusion of which would be "the monadic self,
exteriorized, condensed, and visible in three
dimensions" (McKenna & McKenna 1993: 188).
"History will end, and the transcendental object
that has been drawing being into ever deeper
reflections of itself since the first moments of the
existence of the universe will finally be com-
pletely concrescent in the three-dimensional
space-time continuum" (McKenna 1991: 113).
The timewave, in other words, was a theory
that combined psychedelic revelation, divina-
tion, cosmology and metaphysics into a coher-
ent soteriological narrative. Imbuing biography,
history, phylogeny and cosmogony with inher-
ent meaning and purpose, it came as charged as
a religious prophecy.
Terence went on to become a writer, speaker
and psychedelic guru, and with the flowering of
rave during the late 1980s and early 90s, and the
ensuing psychedelic resurgence, his ideas
started to find a new, young and receptive audi-
ence. It was as a speaker that, in 1985, he met a
Mexican-American writer, visionary and New
Ager, Jose Argiielles, who was independently
developing ideas about 2012 (Defesche 2008).
Argiielles was fascinated with the ancient
Maya, the pre-conquest indigenous culture that
flourished in parts of Mesoamerica, especially
the Yucatan Peninsula, reaching its zenith dur-
ing the so-called Classic Period, 250-900 C.E.
(see Webster 2007). Time, or rather the meas-
urement and correct observation of the passage
of time, clearly mattered to the Maya, for they
developed a complex series of calendars with
concomitant ritual practices. Just as we have
days, weeks, months, years, decades and so on,
so the Maya had interlocking and stacking cy-
cles of days: kins, uinals, tuns, k'tuns and
b'ak'tuns, to name a few. One, the b'ak'tun cycle,
a period of 144,000 days or approximately 394
years, was found by nineteenth century archae-
ologists to culminate on December 21st 2012.
More significantly, an even longer cycle of 13
b'ak'tuns, which began on August 11th 3114
B.C.E. and will have lasted 1,872,000 days when
it expires, also ends on December 21st 2012 (Sit-
V0I.3N0.4
33
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
ler 2006). It was this 'long count' that caught
Arguelles' imagination.
It seems likely that the meeting between
McKenna and Arguelles in 1985 proved a piv-
otal moment for both of them, and for the 2012
phenomenon more generally (Defesche 2008).
McKenna learned from Arguelles that his time-
wave theory corresponded with an ancient
Maya calendar, a coincidence he could not ig-
nore. Given that the Maya had used psilocybin
mushrooms it was hard to escape the conclusion
that they too had been illuminated by some
eternal truth about time, which they left coded
into the complexities of their calendars and the
long count. Arguelles, already inclined to regard
the Maya as spiritual exemplars, took
McKenna' s theory as 'scientific' proof that the
long count contained an essential spiritual mes-
sage, to which he was heir.
In 1987 Arguelles published The Mayan Fac-
tor, the first complete expression of his prophetic
vision. 1987 would, he claimed, initiate a
twenty-five year countdown to the collapse of
Western civilization in 2012, a disaster that
might be averted if 144,000 people meditated at
dawn on August 16th and 17th of that year (fol-
lowing Arguelles, large numbers of people did
meditate at dawn for the so-called 'Harmonic
Convergence'). Since then, Arguelles claims to
have come into contact with the 'Telektonon,'
the 'talking stone of prophecy,' through which
he channels 'transmissions' from the seventh
century Mayan King, K'inich Janaab' Pakal. He
has called for the West to abandon the Gregor-
ian calendar in favour of his own version of the
Maya tzolk'in, a 260 day lunar calendar, with
dire consequences if we do not. And he takes an
unorthodox view regarding the collapse of the
Classic Maya civilization, that it ended when its
leaders departed into space. His interest is not
so much the indigenous Maya, who still inhabit
Yucatan and the Guatemalan highlands, but
these 'Galactic Maya' (Sitler 2006).
A more sober take on the implications of the
long count was introduced by alternative ar-
chaeologist, John Major Jenkins, in his Maya
Cosmogenesis 2012 published in 1998. Following
McKenna, Jenkins promoted the discovery that
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December 21st 2012 will see a rare astronomical
alignment between the sun, a dark streak run-
ning through the Milky Way, and the centre of
our galaxy. Owing to the fact that the earth
wobbles about its axis like a spinning top - giv-
ing rise to the 'precession of the equinoxes' -
such an alignment only occurs approximately
every 26,000 years. It was this rare event,
Jenkins claimed, that the Mayan calendar was
designed to measure.
From these three originary sources, the 2012
movement has grown with many other writers -
of which, Daniel Pinchbeck remains the most
influential - throwing their ideas into the
melting-pot. The process metaphysics of Alfred
North Whitehead and Teilhard de Chardin
(1881-1955), New Age prophecy, the wisdom of
ancient civilizations, astronomical observation,
apocalypticism and psychedelic utopianism
have all become jumbled up into what one
scholar calls 'a self-validating set of ideas,'
which, for people hungry to believe, 'establishes
a reality of its own' (Sitler 2006: 34).
For example, Daniel Pinchbeck's film, 2022:
Time for Change, opens with a beautifully ani-
mated retelling of the creation story from the
Popul Vuh (a collection of texts from the Post
Classic Quiche kingdom of the Western Guate-
malan highlands). The gods have two stabs at
making humans, firstly out of clay and then out
of wood, but as neither creation lives up to their
makers' expectations, they are destroyed. On the
third attempt the gods succeed in making hu-
mans out of corn and so receive the respect and
obeisance they demand. However, humans in-
advertently possess an almost godlike ability to
see long distances and to know 'all that there is
in the world.' Consequently the gods limit hu-
man capability by obscuring their vision with a
mist.
So far, so good, but in the film this 'vision' is
represented by our possessing a throbbing, ly-
sergic 'third eye' that enables us to see the hid-
den, psychedelic, spiritual dimension of reality.
Thus an acid-drenched Western caricature of the
Hindu chakra system is laid over a Quiche crea-
tion story within a Judaeo-Christian eschatology
that wonders whether we too will be destroyed
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Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
by the gods if we fail to regain our forgotten
psychedelic heritage. Truly 'a self-validating set
of ideas.'
Even if we politely push some of Argiielles'
wilder claims to one side, objections to 2012 are
plentiful. It is not at all certain what the long
count meant to the Maya, nor what, if anything,
they supposed would happen at its conclusion.
Indeed, so little is known about the Maya it is
hard to say much about their views on time,
cosmology and eschatology. Whether they knew
about the precession of the equinoxes or what, if
anything, they thought such astronomical
events meant is impossible to prove in the ab-
sence of corroborating evidence. Of the Classic
Maya, one archaeologist writes: "we know just
enough to find them fascinating, but there are
lots of blanks we can fill in to our own satisfac-
tion" (Webster 2007).
As for the timewave, I have criticised it at
length elsewhere (Letcher 2006). Even if we al-
low McKenna his starting assumption, that
there is an essential structure to time that was
intuited by the ancient Chinese and coded into
the I Ching divination system (which for many
may prove a dispensation too far), there remain
some damning problems with his formulation of
the timewave and the way he positioned it on
the timeline. The wave was analysed by mathe-
matician Matthew Watkins who demonstrated
that it is not in fact fractal and that it was con-
structed using some rather inexplicable mathe-
matical legerdemain (Watkins 2010). Nor is it at
all clear how McKenna arrived at December 21st
2012 as the wave's end point: he may simply
have shoehorned it to fit with the Mayan calen-
dar, subsequent to his meeting with Argiielles.
Indeed, 'novelty' is so difficult a concept to de-
fine that many of the events labelled by
McKenna as 'ingressions of novelty' seem arbi-
trary and myopically Amero-centric: the sum-
mer of love, say, or the dropping of the atomic
bomb on Hiroshima. Important as these events
undoubtedly are to us, from a perspective that
takes into account the age and extent of the uni-
verse (which the timewave purports to do), they
are trivial to the point of irrelevance.
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Rather surprisingly, one of the staunchest
critics of the timewave is McKenna's brother,
Dennis, who went on to become a leading re-
search scientist specializing in the ethnophar-
macology of the Amazonian hallucinogenic
brew, ayahuasca. Pointing out that the timewave
is untestable, he regards it, at best, as unscien-
tific. In one online interview he has been heard
to mutter 'don't get me started on the time-
wave.'
But there is one further criticism of 2012 that
I want to develop, namely that it represents a
back-projection onto the ancient Maya of an en-
trenched Western mindset, a Judaeo-Christian
habit of thought that sees time as purposeful but
finite, and coming to a shuddering halt some-
time soon.
Time's Arrow and the
Pursuit of the Millennium
When speculating about the ancient Maya, ad-
vocates of 2012 typically assert that, with their
many counts and calendars, the ancient Maya
were 'obsessed' with time. It's an old saw that
rarely goes unchallenged. The argument goes
that as no one invests time and effort into some-
thing so arbitrary without good reason, the
Maya must have been onto something: their cal-
endars must have pointed towards a real event.
I want to suggest that we have this the wrong
way round: that the obsession with time is ours
and not theirs.
The refusal of days (complete rotations of
the earth), months (complete orbits of the moon
about the earth) and years (complete orbits of
the earth about the sun) to fit tidily together in a
nested set of whole numbers means that calen-
dars are necessarily complicated things. Ours is
no exception but we are so inured to it that we
no longer see it for the strange concoction it is.
We regulate our lives according to the quo-
tidian and an arbitrary seven day cycle, in
which each day (named after ancient pagan
gods) is somehow felt to possess a unique char-
acter or flavour: Monday morning feels very dif-
ferent to Friday night. We divide the year into
twelve months of approximately 30 days each
(approximating the length of the lunar cycle)
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Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
and again attribute each a distinctive seasonal
quality: April, the crudest month, or flaming
June.
Then, quite apart from this higgledy-
piggledy system, which nearly but does not
quite fit together (else we would not need leap
years, hours, minutes and seconds), we impose
a decimal system of year counts. Scoff as we
might at the Chinese astrological system, with
its years apparently ruled by a repeating succes-
sion of animals, we nevertheless attribute each
year, decade, century or millennium a character-
istic Zeitgeist. We talk of the sixties or the eight-
ies or the nineteenth century, as if these arbitrary
time brackets have objective meaning. Rare and
unusual numbers in our year count - 1900, say,
or 2000 - become supercharged with meaning,
presumably because the length of time between
such numerically pleasing numbers far sur-
passes our paltry three score years and ten. Our
year count imposes awe upon us by virtue of its
very magnitude (indeed, once you have estab-
lished a system of year counts, be it decimal,
tzolk'in or whatever, meaningful dates simply
fall out of it).
And then, running through all these compli-
cated cycles and counts, with their correspond-
ing qualities, is the idea of a forward movement,
that time and progress are taking us somewhere.
Though Anno Domini has been replaced with
the more politically correct Common Era, our
forwardly-orientated year count remains a
Christian confection. It's one of the central
planks upon which our civilization is founded.
In 1957 a British historian called Norman
Cohn published a landmark study: The Pursuit of
the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and
Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (Cohn 1970
[1957]). The European Middle Ages had, he ob-
served, been pockmarked by outbreaks of mil-
lenarianism; that is, by the emergence of relig-
ious sects and cults pronouncing the end of days
and the imminence of the apocalypse. The ori-
gins of this recurrent pattern, he stressed, are
Judaeo-Christian. Unlike its pagan contempo-
raries, ancient Judaism, convinced that its peo-
ple were "the Chosen People of the one God"
(Cohn 1970: 19), was profoundly concerned with
Vol.3
its place in history and with how that history
would culminate. Christianity developed the
theme, most notably in the Book of Revelation
where, in lurid prose that has transfixed the
Western imagination ever since, it states that
Christ's second coming will initiate a messianic
reign of one thousand years (the original mil-
lennium) culminating in the last judgement.
In times of social unrest, of war, plague or
natural disaster, millenarian sects - which in the
Middle Ages included flagellants, Cathars, Free
Spirits, Taborites, Anabaptists and Ranters -
have pronounced the end of days to be immi-
nent. Though differing in the details, each ad-
heres to a common paradigm: "the world is
dominated by an evil, tyrannous power of
boundless destructiveness - a power moreover
which is imagined not as simply human but
demonic. The tyranny of that power will be-
come more and more outrageous, the sufferings
of its victims more and more intolerable - until
suddenly the hour will strike when the Saints of
God are able to rise up and overthrow it... This
will be the culmination of history" (Cohn 1970:
21).
Following Norman Cohn, the political theo-
rist John Gray argues that Christian eschatology
did not just rock the Middle Ages: it informed
the Enlightenment, the French Terror, the Rus-
sian Communist Revolution and was with us
still in Bush-era American neo-conservatism, the
latter with its 'axis of evil' and hubristic and pre-
9/11 claim to have somehow put an end to his-
tory (Gray 2007). It remains embedded in our
idea of progress, the idea that 'things can only
get better.'
Perhaps this is another case of New World
optimism versus Old World ennui, and to be
sure not all apocalyptic religions are of Judaeo-
Christian origin (Wojcik 2004), but it is hard not
to read 2012 as just another expression of Chris-
tian millenarianism (McKenna, we should re-
member, was brought up Catholic). In Daniel
Pinchbeck's retelling, the setting has changed -
Christ has been replaced by Quetzalcoatl, the
last judgement with ecological destruction and
psychedelic redemption - but the typical form
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Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
and structure identified by Cohn remain essen-
tially unaltered.
The demonic power for Pinchbeck is now
capitalism, or the corporation, and for the first
half an hour of 2012: Time for Change we are sub-
jected to repeated images of the effects of its ty-
rannical power: deforestation; profligate burn-
ing of fossil fuels; aberrant weather; homeless-
ness; people with cancer; the city as a soulless,
decadent carbuncle. We are told we are facing a
'crisis of consciousness,' a 'time of transforma-
tion,' where the 'system can't hold together' and
we are 'alienated from ourselves.' Salvation will
come through a 'revolution in consciousness,'
achieved through lateral thinking, sustainability
yoga, and most importantly, the shamanistic use
of psychedelics.
But of course 2012 has no significance for
contemporary Maya (Sitler 2006). It is rather a
Western, and therefore Judaeo-Christian, impo-
sition upon ancient Maya culture (which, inci-
dentally, some contemporary Maya, bowing to
the pressure or perhaps spotting an opportunity,
are beginning to accept). The 2012 movement,
from McKenna to Pinchbeck, has simply lifted
parts of indigenous culture willy-nilly, appro-
priating them for its own, time-obsessed ends.
Time flies, we say. It passes, flows, rushes or
drags. We look back in anger and forward to a
bright future. We lay historical events out along
a timeline, imagining ourselves moving through
time from left to right.
Something jars when we learn that the an-
cient Greeks thought the future lay behind them
(as only the past could be known, and hence
'seen') - that's not right at all! But of course, the
future isn't anywhere, in front or behind, left or
right. All of these are metaphors, images from
concrete experience applied to an abstract entity
that, in truth, we cannot apprehend at all (in-
deed, the only way we can conceive abstraction
is through metaphors drawn from concrete ex-
perience: see Deutsche 2005). We know that time
exists - I have the grey hairs to prove it - but
just what kind of a thing it is remains mysteri-
ous.
The French mathematician and philosopher
Henri Bergson drew our attention to this prob-
Vol.3
lem a hundred years ago (Bergson 2005 [1913]).
We cannot conceive of time, in words or in
mathematics, without rendering it in terms of
space, which is to say, as something which it is
not. Our attempts to grasp time do violence to
its very nature: 'time is essentially an undivided
flow... [our] tendency to break it up into units
and make machines to measure it may succeed
in deceiving us that it is a sequence of static
points, but such a sequence never approaches
the nature of time, however close it gets'
(McGilchrist 2009: 76).
For Bergson, both language and maths are
the product of intellect which has evolved not,
as Western Philosophy typically assumes, to
help us ponder the world and our place in it but
to allow us better to act upon the world. Intellect
is therefore ill-equipped to conceive time except
in its own limited, spatial terms of reference. It
must be supplemented instead by intuition. "In-
tuition is... an act, or a series of acts, of direct
participation in the immediacy of experience...
The result will be a cognition of reality such as
intellectual concepts can never yield" (Gouge
1999: 12). For, "in pure duration we get a feeling
of our own evolution and the evolution of the
cosmos" (Gouge 1999: 17).
Bergson employed a range of captivating
metaphors - for which he won the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1927 - to help us approach time
in this sideways manner. He spoke rather of du-
ration, and imagined duration unfolding like an
extemporising dancer for whom the entire se-
quence is implied in every move (Bergson 2005
[1913]).
Bergson' s conclusion was that both mecha-
nistic determinism (the idea that if you could
somehow rewind the universe and set it going
from the same initial starting conditions, it
would replay identically, just as a Youtube clip
does) and its inverse, finalism (the idea that time
is drawn ineluctably forwards to a specific end
point, of which 2012 is one example), rest on this
spatial misconstruction of time. Neither can be
correct (Bergson 1912). The universe does not
admit ingressions of novelty at discrete inter-
vals: rather, novelty endlessly unfolds.
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Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Whether Bergson successfully holed the
metaphysic upon which apocalyptic thinking
floats remains, like all philosophy, contested, but
I find his arguments powerfully persuasive (and
the intuition of duration redolent of the psyche-
delic experience, which is why, perhaps, Aldous
Huxley was also an admirer). If 2012 is set in
stone, as it were, why does it matter whether I
elevate my consciousness or not? Surely the
event is going to happen irrespective of my ac-
tions? (Indeed, some have taken the inevitability
of 2012 as the perfect excuse not to act but to
party, for there really will be no tomorrow.) But
if 2012 is contingent on yours or my behaviour
then it can't be inevitable. Which is it?
Of course, the great test will come in De-
cember 2012: either we will wake up on the
morning of the 22nd to a world that has been
radically transformed, or we won't. One way or
another, we'll know. Should the great transfor-
mation occur I will be the first to own up and
say I was wrong, but history shows that mille-
narian groups tend not to be so graceful in de-
feat. One interesting branch of the Study of Re-
ligion looks at how millenarian groups cope
with the disappointment and cognitive disso-
nance of eschatological non-arrival.
One way is to admit their calculations were
wrong. The Jehovah's Witnesses, for example,
have had to readjust the date of the apocalypse
no fewer than four times (Scotland 2004) and
already there are reports circulating around the
internet that 2012 may be awry by anything be-
tween thirty and one hundred and fifty years, a
handy get out clause. In 2009, psychedelic veter-
ans Gong released an album 2032, the date they
suppose will be "the time when the existence of
Planet Gong will be officially recognised by as-
tronomers on Earth and will signal the first pub-
lic arrival of... space visitors" (Gong 2009: sleeve
notes) (though with tricksters like Gong it is
hard to separate playful allegory from seriously
held eschatology). One can't help thinking of
Beyond the Fringe's famous 'End of the World'
sketch: "Never mind, lads, same time tomor-
row."
Another way is to suggest that something
did actually happen, just not quite what was
Vol.3
expected. Reacting to Matthew Watkins' criti-
cisms of the timewave, Terence McKenna re-
plied by saying that even if there were no truth
to it, the more people that believed, the more
likely that some kind of positive planetary tran-
sition would occur (Watkins 2010). In other
words, even if 2012 proves to be a mirage it will
produce necessarily beneficial results, just not
the ones we hoped for.
But I think Bergson's critique of finalism and
our inability to grasp time call us to abandon
these kinds of tortuous apologetics altogether, to
rid ourselves of the entrenched Judaeo-Christian
conception that the meaning of human lives is
grounded in time's purposive movement, and to
forgo the idea that time is a sort of cosmic esca-
lator carrying us (or more honestly, some kind
of 'chosen' or 'elect' few) inexorably onwards
and upwards to a glorious end. Nor am I per-
suaded by the alternative view, championed by
celebrity atheists like Richard Dawkins, that the
universe is meaningless, or, rather, that the only
meaning we can draw from time is that for each
of us it will eventually run out. Between naive
optimism and bleak pessimism there is, I want
to suggest, a middle way.
Linear Time, Circular Time
In 2006 the storyteller Hugh Lupton and the folk
musician Chris Wood were commissioned by
BBC Radio 3 to produce Christmas Champions,
a radio ballad (mixing music, song, storytelling
and archive recording) about the traditional
English folk custom of the Mummers' Play. Per-
formed all over England during the Christmas
season and involving anything from five to nine
players, these plays typically enacted a fight to
the death between Saint George and another
knight, with the deceased being brought back to
life by a Doctor. All over in about five minutes,
and performed by untrained 'actors,' the plays
were traditionally a means of raising money and
getting free beer during the dead of winter. Rib-
ald and entertaining, they are currently enjoying
something of a revival. Folklorists have had
much to say about the central motif of death and
resurrection but for Wood and Lupton the plays
possess a still deeper meaning.
1.4 38
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
'The Mummers' Play/ writes Wood, 'cele-
brates two simultaneous concepts of time - lin-
ear or 'tragic' time... and circular or 'resurrec-
tive' time. The players are bound in tragic time
while the characters inhabit resurrective time
and the whole is a deep and wondrous melting
of the two' (Wood 2007: sleeve notes). The char-
acters of the play - Saint George, Old Father
Christmas, The Doctor and so on - are tradi-
tional and so outlive the individuals who enact
them. They are, in a sense, eternal. By stepping
into the characters players remember all the
times they have done so before, and all the other
players who did so before them. By keeping the
characters alive each player receives, in turn, a
brief sojourn in circular time. The result? "Eng-
lish Voodoo at its finest!" (ibid).
As Bergson would remind us, time is neither
linear nor circular but given that we have no
choice but to use spatial metaphors I think there
is something profound in Wood and Lupton's
formulation (assuming, of course, that we can
overlook the obviously Christian reference to
resurrection). Instilled as we are with Western
habits of thought, we are very much bound to
linear time. I can see no way of escaping it. We
can't go back to some naive primitivism, if in-
deed 'timelessness' ever existed, but we can es-
cape temporarily into circular time. Ritual re-
mains the way to do so.
Whenever we perform ritual - by which I
mean any intentional, orchestrated set of ac-
tions, gestures or utterances, formal or informal,
repeated at significant moments - we remember
the times we did so before. Ritual derives its
power from memory: tradition, infused by
memory, is what propels us into circular time.
Ritual elicits in us an intensity of feeling, which
is to say, an intuition of duration.
One reason, I think, why 2012 is so appeal-
ing to psychedelic enthusiasts is that the psy-
chedelic experience has so often been framed as
a kind of internal apocalypse from which there
is no going back. Once you've turned on and
tuned in you have no choice but to drop out.
Perhaps this is part of why psychedelics have
been so vilified by the mainstream. But given
that the relationship between 'dropping acid'
Vol.3
and 'dropping out' is one born of cultural ex-
pectation and not pharmacological necessity,
maybe we need to rethink our metaphors and
reframe the psychedelic experience, not as
something that is abruptly discontinuous with
our ordinary lives but as something that steers
and enriches them, something that we return to
for brief, episodic but illuminating and reflective
excursions into circular time. That, after all, is
how psychedelics are framed within indigenous
cultures. I want to suggest that in Britain, where
2012 has not had quite the same impact on the
psychedelic imagination as it has in America,
this return to indigenous frameworks has al-
ready started to happen thanks to a little-known
movement that I call tribedelica.
Get Thee Enhurued!
Tribedelica had its roots in the hippy culture of
the sixties and seventies and in the traveller
scene that flourished in and around the Stone-
henge Free Festival (1974-84), but it emerged as
a distinctive subculture during the anti-roads
protests of the 90s (see Letcher 2003, 2004, 2005,
forthcoming). The then Conservative govern-
ment introduced a massive road-building pro-
gramme which was met by an equally large
groundswell of public protest. Inspired by the
US group Earth First!, protesters employed di-
rect action to try and halt construction, using
treehouses, tunnels, tripods and lock-ons,
'digger-diving' and occasionally eco-sabotage
('pixieing' or 'monkey- wrenching'). What this
meant in practice was that large numbers of
young people, of which I was one, spent months
at a time defending a particular piece of land,
building a profound connection to place and
significant relationships amongst themselves.
No wonder, then, we thought of ourselves as a
'tribe.'
No less opposed to capitalism and the
power of the corporation than 2012, and as
equally concerned about the human impact on
the environment, tribedelica nevertheless re-
jected Christianity in favour of a festive pagan
worldview. Our sense of alienation from nature
would be healed by living close to the land in
low-impact lifestyles, by marking seasonal
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Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
changes with celebratory pagan festivals, with
pilgrimages to ancient sites like Avebury and
Stonehenge, and especially through the periodic
use of the indigenous psychedelic mushroom,
Psilocybe semilanceata.
Rejecting rave as too urban, as too reliant on
electricity and the trappings of industrialized
modernity (those records and decks had to be
manufactured somewhere), tribedelica never-
theless centralized music and dance. It pro-
duced its own music, an acoustic and participa-
tory form of medieval-tinged, drone-based, or-
ganic folk-trance, played in extended psyche-
delic jams on mandolins, bouzoukis, the saz,
bagpipes, dulcimers and hurdy-gurdies, and
used to accompany repetitive Breton step-
dances (see Letcher forthcoming). As one tribe-
delic band, The Space Goats, put it, the aim of
such sessions was 'to get thee enhurued,' by
which they meant to achieve an ecstatic tribal
reconnection to each other and the land through
music and dance.
Well, tribedelica had its day, and, however
extraordinary it was to be a part of it, it has to be
seen as an efflorescence of a particular historical
moment and one not without its own problems.
It was no less guilty than 2012 of romanticising
the ancient past, and even though it was a coun-
tercultural and low-impact lifestyle it remained
reasonably dependent on the mechanisms of
modernity for its survival. However, I would
argue that for a modern psychedelic movement
it was unusual in its rejection of Judaeo-
Christian thinking. And its legacy, the idea of
consuming psychedelics in a circular framework
at pivotal moments of the year, lives on.
Since English Heritage introduced its Man-
aged Open Access policy in 1999, increasing
numbers of people have celebrated the summer
solstice at Stonehenge. On average something
like 30,000 people show, with large numbers
also traveling to Avebury, the Rollright Stones
and other ancient sites around the country.
While everyone has their own reasons for going,
many do so because they are looking for some-
thing, a sense of connection to 'the pagan,' 'the
ancients,' 'the ancestors,' or perhaps just some-
thing intangible and unnameable. In the absence
Vol.3
of sound systems people bring acoustic instru-
ments and expect to jam. As well as being a tan-
gible expression of what Terence McKenna
called 'the archaic revival' (McKenna 1991) the
summer solstice is the tribedelic festival gone
viral.
As a 'significant date' in some newly in-
vented, circular, psychedelic ritual calendar, the
summer solstice, usually the night of the 20th
June through to sunrise on the 21st, has much in
its favour. Potentially it has global appeal, at
least for people at latitude (in the southern
hemisphere, the 21st of June is usually the win-
ter solstice, but no less relevant). It is an event
on a cosmic scale, one that encourages humility
by inviting us to consider our place in the wider
scheme of things, but one with local and imme-
diate relevance, impacting on our modern lives
by virtue of it being the longest day. Unlike
some modern Neo-Pagan festivals it has form:
archaeology tells us that people have celebrated
the summer solstice for millennia. Judaeo-
Christian eschatology has no claim upon it: it
comes drenched in pagan connotations which,
to the modern Western imagination, all point to
the natural world. Unlike Christmas, Easter,
Halloween and Valentine's Day it has so far
eluded the grip of the capitalist marketing ma-
chine: it remains a people's festival. It doesn't
have to be celebrated at Stonehenge. It can, and
preferably should, be celebrated locally (indeed,
the crowds and security presence at Stonehenge
don't necessarily make it an ideal tripping envi-
ronment). And, as all rituals should, it has a
natural dramatic shape: the expectation of the
all night vigil followed by the climax of the sun-
rise.
When we gather in small groups to hold vig-
ils around fires we step away from modernity,
expose ourselves to the elements and feel we are
engaged in something primal. When we make
music together, we feel a profound sense of con-
nection to one another: as Oliver Sacks says, in
'such a situation, there seems to be an actual
binding of nervous systems' (cited in McGil-
christ 2009: 105). And when psilocybin is thrown
into the mix, something even more extraordi-
nary begins to happen.
.4 40
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
One of the recurring trip reports from magic
mushroom users is that the experience occasions
a kind of communion with the natural world
(Krippner & Luke, 2009), especially the plant
kingdom (the same is true of iboga and ayahua-
sca). Much has been written by futurologists
about the emergence and significance of the
noosphere, the global network of information
exchange made possible by the internet and
modern communication technology. But could it
be that, as some have speculated, psilocybin and
other tryptamines offer access to a kind of
planetary-wide network linking plant and ani-
mal kingdoms into a 'Gaian mind,' a 'psi-
losphere'?
Irrespective of whether this kind of specula-
tion is helpful or not, I find the idea that myce-
lial networks of small groups venturing out to
their local significant site, celebrating the sol-
stice, making music, 'entering the psilosphere,'
getting enhurued, connecting by stepping into
circular time, an inspiring one. Were this to
happen or become commonplace it would, at
the very least, offer us an alternative framework
to the apocalypticism within which psychedelics
have traditionally been consumed and inter-
preted in the West, and which if not the cause is
certainly part of the problems we face. Anything
more would be a happy bonus.
Sceptical as I am over 2012, if even the most
conservative predictions about climate change
are correct then humanity is facing some very
stormy waters ahead. It may very well be touch
and go whether we make it across to the other
side. But I strongly believe that the judicious use
of psychedelics has a role to play in helping us
negotiate the vicissitude of a high-carbon future.
They might conceivably stimulate us to find
creative solutions to apparently intractable prob-
lems. They might help us re-orientate ourselves
away from our innate short-sightedness to a
wider and more empathetic view of the world,
and thus help us create a more sustainable life-
style (as the better parts of 2022: Time for Change
suggest). Or they might even hurl us into a nec-
essary paragnostic encounter with the shaman-
istic Other.
Vol.3
But whatever it is we glean from our explo-
rations it is imperative that we do so by harness-
ing the billowing spinnakers of the psychedelic
vision to the mast of reason. As Dennis
McKenna puts it, 'reason is our friend.' If we do
not - if we forget to question - then the use of
psychedelics risks becoming just another 'ism,'
entheogism, an orthodox set of beliefs rooted in
the millenarian obsessions of a bygone age. The
time for that is surely past.
References
Amorim Joao (2010). '2012: Time for Change.
Unreleased movie,' available at
www.2012timeforchange.com, accessed 25/
2/11.
Aveni Anthony F. (1998). 'Time.' Ch. 18, pp. 314-
333 in Mark C. Taylor (ed.) Critical Terms for
Religious Studies. Chicago: Chicago Univer-
sity Press.
Bergson Henri (1912). Creative Evolution. Lon-
don: Macmillan and Co.
Bergson Henri (2005 [1913]). Time and Free Will.
London: Elibron Classics.
Cohn Norman (1970 [1957]). The Pursuit of the
Millennium: Revolutionary Millennarians and
Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. Lon-
don: Paladin.
Defesche Sacha (2008). "The 2012 Phenomenon':
A Historical and Typological Approach to a
Modern Apocalyptic Mythology' MA. The-
sis, Department of Religious Studies, Uni-
versity of Amsterdam. Available at
http: / / skepsis.no / ?p=599, accessed 25 / 2 /
11.
Deutsche Guy 2005. The Unfolding of Lan-
guage: the Evolution of Mankind's Greatest
Invention. London: Arrow Books.
Gouge Thomas A. (1999 [1912]). 'Editor's Intro-
duction' pp. 9-20 in Henri Bergson An Intro-
duction to Metaphysics. Translated by T.E.
1.4 41
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Hulme. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company.
Gong (2009). 2032. G-Wave AAGWCD001.
Gray John (2007). Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion
and the Death of Utopia. London: Allen Lane.
Krippner, S., & Luke, D. (2009). 'Psychedelics
and Species Connectedness.' Bulletin of the
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Studies 19 (1): 12-15.
Letcher, Andy. (2003). "Gaia told me to do it':
Resistance and the Idea of Nature within
Contemporary British Eco-Paganism.' Eco-
Theology 8: 61-84.
Letcher, Andy. (2004). 'Raising the Dragon: Folk-
lore and the Development of Contemporary
British Eco-Paganism.' The Pomegranate 6(2):
175-198.
Letcher, Andy. (2005). "There's Bulldozers in the
Fairy Garden': Re-Enchantment Narratives
in British Eco-Paganism.' Ch. 14, pp. 175-
186 in Hume, Lynne and Kathleen Phillips
(eds.) Popular Spiritualities: The Politics of
Contemporary Enchantment. London: Ash-
gate.
McGilchrist Iain. (2009). The Master and his Emis-
sary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the
Western World. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press.
McKenna Terence. (1991). The Archaic Revival:
Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the
Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution,
Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the
End of History. New York: HarperSanFran-
cisco.
McKenna Terence. (1993). True Hallucinations.
Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary
Adventures in the Devil's Paradise. New York:
HarperSanFrancisco.
McKenna Terence and Dennis McKenna. (1993).
The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens
and the I Ching. New York: HarperSanFran-
cisco.
Pinchbeck Daniel (2003). Breaking Open the Head:
a Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contem-
porary Shamanism. New York: Broadway
Books.
Pinchbeck Daniel (2006). 2022: The Return of
Quetzalcoatl. London: Jeremy P. Tarcher/
Penguin.
Letcher Andy. (2006). Shroom: A Cultural History
of the Magic Mushroom. London: Faber & Fa-
ber.
Letcher Andy. Forthcoming. 'Close to the
Hedge: Critical Recollections of Psychedel-
ics, Animism and Spirituality' In Graham
Harvey, (ed.) Handbook of Contemporary
Animism. Brill: Leiden.
Letcher Andy. Forthcoming. 'Paganism and Brit-
ish Folk Music' In Andy Bennett and
Donna Weston (eds.) Pop Pagans: Paganism
and Popular Music. London: Equinox.
Vol.3
Scotland Nigel (2004). 'The Jehovah's Wit-
nesses.' pp. 40-42 in Christopher Partridge
(ed.) New Religions: a Guide. New Religious
Movements, Sects and Alternative Spirituali-
ties. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sitler Robert K. (2006). 'The 2012 Phenomenon:
New Age Appropriation of an Ancient
Maya Calendar.' Nova Religio: The Journal of
Alternative and Emerging Religions 9(3): 24-
38.
Watkins Matthew (2010). '2012 and the 'Watkins
Objection' to Terence McKenna's 'Timewave
Theory.' Available at
http: / / www.secretsofcreation.com / 2012,
accessed 25/2/11.
i.4 42
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Webster David L. (2007). 'The Uses and Abuses
of the Ancient Maya.' Paper delivered at
The Emergence of the Modern World con-
ference, Otzenhausen, Germany. Available
at
http: / / www.anthro.psu.edu/ f acuity staff /
webster.shtml, accessed 25/2/11.
Wojcik Daniel (2004). 'Apocalypticism and Mil-
lenarianism.' pp. 388-395 in Christopher
Partridge (ed.) New Religions: a Guide. New
Religious Movements, Sects and Alternative
Spiritualities. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Wood, Chris. (2007). Trespasser. Ruf Records
RUFCD11.
A writer and a
folk musician,
Andy is the
author of
Shroom: A Cul-
tural History of
the Magic Mush-
room and has
published a
range of articles
and academic
papers on sub-
jects as diverse
as psychedelics,
paganism, bardism, environmental protest, fair-
ies, shamanism and evolution. A modern day
troubadour, he plays mandolin, writes songs,
and fronts darkly crafted folk band, Telling the
Bees. A leading exponent of the English Bag-
pipes, he plays for brythonic dancing in a trio
called Wod.
i ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ mmm
i psypressulgj"
immcr
The first edition of the Psychedelic Press UK printed
magazine is now available. Contributions include:
'Empathogeneration' by Dimka Drewczynski
'It Is So Beautiful' by About Yellow
'Cinema High' by Ana lugulescu
'On the Nature of the Psilocybe-Folk' by Jack Hunter
Book Review: Erin by Roger Keen
'An Experience of Dematerialization on Woodrose Seeds'
by
Mark A. Schroll
'Enter: A New Religious Era' by Thomas B. Roberts
'Holy Mountain or Holey Mountain?' by David Luke
Visit http://psychedelicpress.moonfruit.com for more info.
Vol. 3 NO. 4
43
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
A Letter to Anthropologists
John R.Swanton
i 1
First published as Swanton, J. R., (1953). 'A Letter to Anthropolo-
gists.' Journal of Parapsychology 17: 144-52.
Fellow Anthropologists, the present writer
happens to be one of the oldest of our bourgeon-
ing fraternity but, as he freely confesses, far
from occupying a position in its upper echelon
of eminence in spite of the honors with which
you have had the kindness — and possibly the
indulgence — to bestow upon him. He is near
enough the other end of the trail, however, for a
swansong in the approved dramatic style, but
believes that, so far as the strictly anthropologi-
cal field is concerned, you require no profes-
sional advice from him since you have carried
the standard of this new and all-important dis-
cipline far beyond his operational sphere. He
would not venture to address you at all were it
not that he believes that a significant revolution
which concerns us all is taking place quietly but
surely in a related branch of science and that it is
not being met in an honest, a truly scientific,
manner.
Some of you perhaps received your educa-
tion in physics and chemistry before the century
began, before Einstein had messed up the New-
tonian universe and the resolution of the atom
had destroyed forever the theoretic boundary in
minimals. You may remember the shock we all
got when Roentgen obtained a photograph
completely through those "hard, round, indi-
visible particles" which had come down from
Newton and had for two hundred years
bounded scientific vision in that direction.
Of course Newton's definition was only a
hypothesis, and a very useful and fruitful one,
but many of his successors accepted it as axio-
matic truth, a dogma if you will, and experi-
enced a shock when it faded out of existence as
if it were merely a very clever fore-drop to a
much more wonderful scene. But if one looks
into the history of science, he will find that its
greatest advances have often been made by
Vol. 3 NO
challenging a supposed axiom. That was what
happened when Copernicus demolished the
Ptolemaic universe. When that Padua professor
refused to look through Galileo's telescope, he
felt he was protecting the science of his time as
well as its theology, not against heresy as we
now imagine it, but against an impossible inno-
vation in the established order of things. Most of
us are old enough to have caught some of the
sparks that flew after The Origin of Species was
published. The resulting struggle is usually rep-
resented as "warfare of science with theology,"
but it would be truer to call it warfare between
the older science and the newer for, while theol-
ogy was arrayed principally with the older, we
must not forget that it was upheld also by scien-
tists of eminence, such as Georges Cuvier and
Louis Agassiz. Sigmund Freud's name is con-
nected with another challenge to the past.
Sometimes these primary revolutions creep
upon human thought so unexpectedly that sup-
posedly reputable scientists, the great men of
their time, are taken unaware, especially since
the new thought may come upon them from an
4 44
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
entirely unorthodox quarter and in a wholly
unorthodox way. The story of hypnotism is in-
teresting in this connection. Under, it is true, a
somewhat crude form as "Mesmerism" it was
condemned by a committee of distinguished
men, which included Lavoisier and Benjamin
Franklin, and later a leading London physician,
John Elliotson, was driven out of his profession
because of his support of hypnotic therapy.
Medical opinion was equally hostile to James
Esdaile who had used it successfully in opera-
tions in India. Later the British Association for
the Advancement of Science refused to allow
demonstrations of hypnotism before it by James
Braid, though he ultimately won out and se-
cured for it a scientific status.
At the present time it is believed by a num-
ber of experienced investigators that there are
still other manifestations of the mind beyond
those revealed in hypnotism and psychoanaly-
sis. I refer more particularly to work now espe-
cially associated with the Parapsychology Labo-
ratory of Duke University. When this was first
made public the assumption of extrasensory
perception cut squarely across my scientific
frame of reference and I was not surprised at the
counter-criticism it aroused and which I ac-
cepted as justified. However, much to my sur-
prise, the work in parapsychology did not im-
mediately sink out of sight under the wave of
hostile criticism. Nevertheless, I did not pay
much more attention to the subject until the year
before my retirement from active work at the
Bureau of American Ethnology. Up to that time I
was unfamiliar with the proceedings of the Brit-
ish and American Societies of Psychical Re-
search, and anything that I heard of them was
by no means to their advantage. About the time
of which I speak, however, I happened to run
across a small volume containing diagrams
which professed to be examples of the transfer-
ence of thought from one person to another
without direct contact between the parties con-
cerned. A point which struck me forcibly regard-
ing these diagrams was the percentage of resem-
blances between the designs set down by the
"agent" and those supplied by the "percipient."
Of course, if the great majority had been misses
Vol.3
the result would hardly have been convincing,
and if there had been agreement in each case I
would have felt sure that there was fraud or that
something was wrong with the technique em-
ployed. But the fact was that along with failures
and marginal cases there was a sufficient per-
centage of "hits" to render the claim plausible
and coincidence unlikely. Shortly after this I
happened to fall heir to a number of publica-
tions by members of the psychical research so-
cieties, and I spent some time studying them,
my interest being a bit stimulated by an event in
my own experience which had remained in a
corner of my mind for half a century, from the
time when I was a student at Harvard.
When I came to enlarge my reading in psy-
chical research I found that, while much of the
material was mixed up with spiritualism, and
one came in contact with plenty of evidences of
fraud, there was a great deal resembling that
which parapsychologists are now investigating.
Besides, the names connected with this evidence
are not obscure or unknown to fame.
One of the weightiest supporters of belief in
extrasensory perception — though the time when
he made his investigations was forty years be-
fore that word came into use — was Prof. William
James, founder of American psychology, and
one of the most penetrating minds America has
produced. Today James's report on the results of
his close and detailed examination of the mental
phenomena presented by Mrs. Leonora Piper
seems to have been forgotten. After many years
devoted to the study of her case, during part of
which time Mrs. Piper's movements were
watched by a detective, James made the sub-
joined declaration. That he never afterward
modified the statements contained will be evi-
dent to anyone who reads "Final Impressions of
a Psychical Researcher" in Memories and Studies,
a volume of essays printed in 1911, a year after
James's death, under the editorship of his son.
The report in part is as follows:
But it is a miserable thing for a question of
truth to be confined to mere assumption
and counter-assumption, with no decisive
thunderbolt of fact to clear the baffling
.4 45
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
darkness. And, sooth to say, in talking so
much of the merely presumption-
weakening value of our records, I have
myself been wilfully taking the point of
view of the so-called "rigorously scientific"
disbeliever, and making an ad hominem
plea. My own point of view is different.
For me the thunderbolt has fallen, and the
orthodox belief has not merely had its pre-
sumption weakened, but the truth itself of
the belief is decisively overthrown. If I
may employ the language of the profes-
sional logic-shop, a universal proposition
can be made untrue by a particular in-
stance. If you wish to upset the law that all
crows are black, you must not seek to
show that no crows are; it is enough if you
prove one single crow to be white. My
own white crow is Mrs. Piper. In the
trances of this medium, I cannot resist the
conviction that knowledge appears which
she has never gained by the ordinary wak-
ing use of her eyes and ears and wits.
What the source of this knowledge may be
I know not, and have not the glimmer of
an explanatory suggestion to make; but
from admitting the fact of such knowledge
I can see no escape. So when I turn to the
rest of the evidence, ghosts and all, I can-
not carry with me the irreversibly negative
bias of the "rigorously scientific" mind,
with its presumption as to what the true
order of nature ought to be. I feel as if,
though the evidence be flimsy in spots, it
may nevertheless collectively carry
weight. The rigorously scientific mind
may, in truth, easily overshoot the mark.
Science means, first of all, a certain dispas-
sionate method. To suppose that it means
a certain set of results that one should pin
one's faith upon and hug forever is sadly
to mistake its genius, and degrades the
scientific body to the status of a sect.
We all, scientists and non-scientists,
live on some inclined plane of credulity.
The plane tips one way in one man, an-
other way in another; and may he whose
plane tips in no way be the first to cast a
stone! As a matter of fact, the trances I
speak of have broken down for my own
mind the limits of the admitted order of
nature. Science, so far as science denies
such exceptional occurrences, lies pros-
trate in the dust for me; and the most ur-
gent intellectual need which I feel at pre-
sent is that science be built up again in a
form in which such things may have a
positive place. Science, like life, feeds on
its own decay. New facts burst old rules;
then newly divined conceptions bind old
and new together into a reconciling law.
So there it is. Was the writer of the above pos-
sessed of a crude, third-rate intelligence? It was
the intelligence that founded American psy-
chology. Was he deceived by a woman so ex-
ceedingly clever that not even detectives were
able to catch up with her and, although exam-
ined by some of the most experienced investiga-
tors of England and America, was never "ex-
posed"? Do not cite the cases of mediums like
Palladino who have been detected in fraudulent
practices after deceiving many highly competent
investigators. Those cases almost always con-
cerned physical mediums operating in darkness
or semi-darkness, not trance mediums commu-
nicating messages in broad daylight. There was,
and is, no evidence of fraud in the present in-
stance, and to suppose that the communications
of which James speaks happened to be right by
coincidence is absurd. And this is merely one
case out of a mass of material.
It is often demanded that advocates of alleg-
edly "occult" phenomena present a complete,
thoroughly checked case. Well, here it is and
presented half a century ago. Why, then, did it
not register, and has it not registered? Simply
because the majority of psychologists would not
and will not believe or accept its implications.
So that is what science, or at least psychol-
ogy, has become! A set of dogmas which the
"faithful" must accept or be damned. Is this sci-
ence or is science what James called it, "a certain
dispassionate method" as opposed to "a certain
set of results that one should pin one's faith
upon and hug forever"? This latter interpreta-
NO. 4 46
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
tion, as James warns, "degrades the scientific
body to the status of a sect," a degradation
which the main body of psychologists is now
engaged in bringing about. What has become of
that alleged willingness to accept truth from
whatever quarter it comes? Are we to under-
stand that facts must be censored by the high
priests of the cult, and have a "none-genuine-
without-our-signature" tag affixed?
The attitude is, however, nothing new. Hav-
ing observed manifestations of the above char-
acter in connection with several other noted
mediums, and been requested by associate sci-
entists to investigate them, Sir William Crookes
wrote, the italics being his:
It was taken for granted by the writers
that the results of my experiments would
be in accordance with their preconcep-
tions. What they desired was not the truth,
but an additional witness in favor of their
own foregone conclusion... When I am told
that what I describe cannot be explained
in accordance with their preconceived
ideas of the laws of nature, the objector
really begs the question at issue and re-
sorts to a mode of reasoning which brings
science to a standstill.
And so, on being invited to observe the same
phenomena, two of these gentlemen, Dr. Shar-
pey and Prof. Stokes, find it "inconvenient" to do
so. Shades of Galileo!
Helmholtz is reported to have said to an-
other physicist "that neither the evidence of all
the members of the Royal Society nor the evi-
dence of his own senses would ever make him
believe in thought-transference, since thought-
transference was impossible."
A scientist of Dr. Rhine's acquaintance when
asked what he thought of the case for ESP re-
plied in similar language that "if it were on any
other issue, one-tenth of the evidence reported
would have been enough to convince me. As it
is, ten times that amount would not do it."
Jules Remains, who won distinction as poet,
dramatist, essayist, and medical researcher,
comments:
Vol.3
I shall never admit that reason should re-
fuse to consider a fact of experience
merely because it is improbable and con-
trary to the postulates of science to date.
Taking into account the new fact, it must
simply begin anew its exposition of the
nature of things.
William James himself had the following experi-
ence:
An illustrious biologist told me one day
that even if telepathy were proved to be
true the savants ought to band together to
suppress and conceal it, because such facts
would upset the uniformity of nature, and
all sorts of other things, without which the
scientists cannot carry on their pursuits.
According to that biologist, then, science is "a
certain set of facts that one should pin one's
faith to" and a faith to be protected by system-
atic suppression like Mediaeval religion or
Communist ideology. Presumably the autos-da-fe
will follow. At present the technique employed
seems to be suppression by silence.
I have already mentioned the initial strug-
gles for recognition of some now accepted scien-
tific facts. The trouble experienced when it is a
question of new facts regarding the mind is the
great difference between the physical and the
psychological. Things physical remain relatively
constant and can be investigated at will, but
minds, as every anthropologist well knows, do
not necessarily respond to the will of the ex-
perimenter. One field worker can produce re-
sults from what is sterile ground to another. One
subject interviewed will talk freely; another, and
perhaps the best authority in the tribe, will shut
up like a clam. And so one who experiments
with ESP cards, for instance, cannot obtain con-
firmatory evidence at will. It should be apparent
by this time that extrasensory and similar abili-
ties are uneven endowments and that the reac-
tions of good subjects will often be smothered in
a mass experiment. But one would suppose that
we already have enough cases of extrasensory
i.4 47
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
ability to prove the case. How many of those
who refuse to accept data of this kind because
they cannot themselves produce results at will
are able to answer correctly in one minute the
question "What number is that which, being di-
vided by the product of its digits, the quotient is
3; and if 18 be added, the digits will be inverted
?" Or extract the sixth root of 24,137,585 in 25
seconds? Yet they know perfectly well that
mathematical geniuses have done both, and, as
a matter of fact, the power some lightning calcu-
lators have is beyond present explanation. And
so must I deny the special abilities of a Home, a
Piper, or a Linzmayer because I haven't the same
or because I know of few who have?
I find no fault with those who do not take an
interest in this subject, or with those who are
skeptical regarding it, but with the fact that the
present attitude toward it in the scientific world
is not scientific. It is a standing refutation of the
claim that science is interested in truth and only
truth without regard to its source or the implica-
tions involved in the acceptance of it.
There is a suspicion — rather more than a
suspicion in fact — that the present prejudice is
occasioned in large measure by the association
of these phenomena with supposed "spirit mani-
festations" and that it seems to border upon an-
other realm of existence as to the reality of
which many scientists have a pronounced dis-
taste in spite of the fact that they will assert that
they are in no manner opposed to religion. Dr.
G. E. Hutchinson, Professor of Biology at Yale
University, in an article called "Methodology
and Value in the Natural Sciences" says regard-
ing ESP phenomena: "The reason why most sci-
entific workers do not accept these results is
simply that they do not want to and avoid doing
so by refusing to examine the full detailed re-
ports of the experiments in question." But they
should be reminded that science is concerned
with the identification and study of phenomena,
not with the pre-judgment of what can or cannot
be believed.
No doubt many anthropologists will say that
this question belongs in another field and that it
is up to the psychologists to thrash it out. I be-
lieve, however, that because of the number of
Vol.3
real charlatans who profess to operate as psy-
chologists the regular members of the discipline
are sensitive as to their status. Indeed, I have
received a distinct impression, which others will
I am sure confirm, that those who pursue what
have been called "the exact sciences" look with
considerable disdain on the social sciences,
though, when one considers some physical
theories now in good standing, one doesn't see
where they get the right to such a supercilious
attitude. Therefore, perhaps a protest from some
other field may not be unwelcome, and I am not
merely in another field but fortunately well
situated in having my professional life behind
me and in being willing to stick out my neck in
place of those who might fear for their reputa-
tions and their careers. Adhesion to current or-
thodoxy is always more profitable than dissent
but the future belongs to dissenters. Prejudice
and cowardice in the presence of the status quo
are the twin enemies of progress at all times and
of that "dispassionate method" in which science
consists.
ANTHROPOLOGY,
CONSCIOUSNESS
AND CULTURE
Prof. Ronald Hutton will present a talk called
"Modern Paganism and Witchcraft" at the inaugural
Anthropology, Conciousness and Culture lecture, a
series of fascinating lectures to be held at Blackwell's
Bookshop, 87 Park Street, Bristol on a monthly basis
from October 3 1 st .
Doors at 6:30 for a 7pm start.
Forthcoming lectures include:
Dr. Fiona Bowie - 28/1 1/12
Prof. Bruce Hood - 12/12/12
Dr. David Luke - 30/01/13
Dr. Bettina Schmidt - 27/02/13
Paul Devereux - 27/03/13
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Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
An Historical Review of a Notable Physical Medium in the Tropics:
Anna Prado, a mulher que falava com os mortos
AdemirXavier
i 1
ANN
A MULHER QUE FALAVA
COM 05 MORTOS
Title: Anna Prado:
A Mulher Que Falava Com os Mortos
Author: Samuel Magalhaes
Publisher: Federacao Espfrita Brasileira, 2012
ISBN: 978-85-7328-703-5
The Amazon rainforest is a dominant ecosys-
tem. As the largest tropical forest in the world it
controls the local climate, and sets the pace for
the economies of Brazil's northernmost states.
The region was re-discovered and explored by
the Spanish and Portuguese in the 18th century.
The isle formerly known as Tupinambarana, as
the area around the city now known as Paritins
in the state of Para, was named just after its dis-
covery in 1749 by a certain Portuguese captain
Vol 3 No.
called Jose Cordovil. The name 'Paritins' is de-
rived from one of the native peoples inhabiting
the region long before the arrival of Europeans.
The Paritins were not alone in the region, other
peoples, including the Tupinambas, Sapupe, Pe-
ruviana, Mundurucu and Mawe, also lived in
the region. It is little known today, however, that
Paritins was also the birth place of one of the
Brazil's first physical mediums: Anna Rebello
Prado (1883-1923).
Her story is the subject of a new book Anna
Prado: a mulher que falava com os mortos (Anna
Prado, the woman who talked to the dead) by
Samuel Magalhaes. Until the publication of Ma-
galhaes' book, to talk about Anna Prado was the
the equivalent of quoting extensively from O
trabalho dos mortos (The work of the dead, pub-
lished in 1921) by Raymundo Nogueira de Faria
or, to a lesser extent, O que eu vi (What I saw) by
Ettore Bosio, published even earlier. Both refer-
ences are only available in Portuguese, the for-
mer can be easily found on the web, while Bo-
sio' s work is a very rare book today. The Italian
maestro Bosio was responsible for all photo-
graphs in de Faria's book which are reproduced
in Magalhaes' work. Magalhaes made an exten-
sive search in the public libraries of Paritins and
Belem (capital of the state of Para) in order to
find the date and birthplace of Anna Prado, a
controversy among historians interested in
Spiritualist mediums. He found that Paritins'
history is linked to many members of the Prado
family who were active Spiritualists in the re-
gion at the time, and were also involved in the
public administration of the city (Anna Prado
husband, Euripedes, was the city superinten-
dent from 1911 to 1913, a role equivalent to a
mayor today). According to Magalhaes, in 1907
Paritins saw the publication of the first number
of the Spiritualist newspaper 'O Semeador' (The
Sewer) by the Spiritist circle "Amor e Caridade."
49
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
NOGUEIRA DE FARIA
0 TRABALHO DOS MORTOS
(Livro do Joao)
Mas se o sceplicismo vela
em nos, a neccssidade de ere*
attrae-uos.
FLA. MM A WON.
loderna analy-
sou o iiiujkIo exterior; suas pe-
netrances no uiiiver.su objective
s&o profundas : issu sera sua
hours e sua gloria; mas nada
sabe ainda do uni verso invisivel
e do in undo interior. E' esse
imperio illimitaUo que lite resta
couquistar.:
• A liunianidnde cansada de
dogmas e das especula?Oes sent
provus, iiieigulliou-se no mate-
rialisino ou na indifference. Nao
ha salvacilo para o peiisamenlo
sinno em tuna doutrina baseada
sobre a experieucia e o teste-
muuiio dos factos.=
LEON DENIS.
raria da Federa$ao Espirifa Brasili
AVENIDA PASSOS, 28
RIO DE JANEIRO— BRASIL
Manaus had its own Spiritualist journal called
"Mensageiro" (Messenger) already in 1901.
Euripedes Prado was very interested in the
table turning phenomenon and thought the fam-
ily should try an experiment. The first attempt
on June 18th 1918 was, however, unsuccessful.
Only on June 24th, in a family sitting, did they
succeeded in producing the famous 'table turn-
ing' phenomenon, obtaining the levitation of a
table. Through the classical signal system of
'yes' and 'no' replies after uttered questions,
they were put in contact with a deceased per-
sonality who called himself 'John' (it was then
St. John the Baptist day) and discovered that the
occurrences were linked specifically to Anna's
presence. Later, John identified himself as
Felismino Olympio de Carvalho Rebello, one of
Anna Prado's uncles in life. This entity assumed
the position of 'controller' in all seances that
took place in over the short period of time until
her death in 1923. Most of Anna Prado's seances
were private sittings attended only by very close
friends. Much of Magalhaes' book follows very
closely the descriptions given in de Faria's book.
Vol. 3 No
There are long excerpts taken from this work
that help to build the narrative in a roughly
chronological order. However, some details are
lacking in Magalhae's work such as, for exam-
ple, a short biographic note on Ettore Bosio, the
man in charge of setting up the photo equip-
ment and developing the emulsions of all sit-
tings.
Historical accounts of Anna Prado's sittings
report that several classical physical phenomena
were produced: raps, levitations, apports, direct
writing, 'spirit surgeries,' full materializations
and the 'dematerialization' of the medium (see
last paragraph). Such accounts include Gabriel
Delanne's 'La Reincarnation' - Documents pour
server a l'etude de la Reincarnation, Paris,
France, 1924 - (Documents for the study of Re-
incarnation); an article in the Revue Spirit, May
1923, p. 230-231; and two other chronicles in a
1922 issue of the Revue Metapsychique signed
by Pascal Forthuny. There is a report of 'seed
germination' (Chapter 7 - Um fenomeno raro, p.
191), whereby seeds of Eucalyptus plants
brought from Rio de Janeiro were found in an
advanced stage of germination after a sitting on
May 1922. Moreover, when the medium was in
trance, she was able to describe ordinary facts at
a distance, perhaps best illustrated by Anna
Prado's description of a rebellion in Pari tins on
January 21st 1921, while she was in Belem
(something known as 'far seeing,' p. 97).
By far the most extraordinary, and most
highly publicised, narratives associated with
Anna Prado name were the materialization ac-
counts of Rachel Figner, given by Esther and
Fred Figner, which are all fully reproduced by
Magalhaes (Chapter 6 - A extraordinaria mater-
ilizacao de Raquel Figner). The name Fred
Figner (1866-1947) is linked to the phonographic
industry in Latin America, since he, a Jewish
immigrant from Milevsko in the Czech Repub-
lic, was responsible for bringing Edison's inven-
tion to Brazil in 1900. The Figners lost their old-
est daughter Rachel in 1920. In a private seance
with Mrs. Prado on May 1st 1921, Esther made
the first description of a spirit form identified as
her daughter, although she recognized that the
materialization was not complete. Then the
4 50
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
phenomenon developed progressively a couple
of times until the last sittings on May 4th and
6th, which were considered by Rachel's parents
to be the most perfect ones. Fred Figner's testi-
mony of the seance was published in the news-
paper O Estado do Para at the time, causing a real
sensation in the population and bringing the
strong opposition of the Catholic Church over
the Prado family. According to Figner, the pres-
ence of Rachel lasted 40 minutes and was wit-
nessed by 10 people, in addition to the members
of his own family, in a partially illuminated
room. To Fred Figner 'Rachel was there fully
alive, ready to go to a party. Her head high with
her round arms, usual smile, nice hands, and
even the position of her hands testified that she
was in our presence exactly as she used to be
while on earth" (excerpt from p. 188). A still ex-
isting paraffin glove of Rachel's hand (Fig. 54 on
p. 181) was fabricated during those sittings to-
gether with several paraffin flowers. Today
these objects are part of the seance relics in the
possession of Mrs. Marta Prochnik, whose in-
terview can be read at the end of the book. Ra-
chel was Mrs. Prochnik' s great aunt.
Finally, the most controversial aspects of the
book are the pictures and descriptions (already
published in de Faria's book and illustrating
Magalhaes' book cover), of Mrs. Prado's in-
stances of 'dematerization.' If an image is just a
representation of what is on the mind of the ob-
server, the images showing parts of the trans-
parent body of Mrs. Prado resting on a rocking
chair are unlikely to be credited as genuine. It is
today (and, perhaps, at Bosio's time as well)
very easy to reproduced the same photo effect
using mirrors and software trickery. However,
both the narratives of Bosio and Magalhaes in-
sist that the effect was real and that it was ob-
tained for the first time on September 13th 1921
(p. 201, Chapter 7). According to Bosio, the very
production of it was suggested by the medium's
controller, provided restricted illumination con-
ditions were observed and the medium could
reach a state of deep trance. After the control-
ler's signal, the magnesium light was flashed
several times. The success of the experiment was
assured by John himself. Some images show
Vol.3
only parts of the medium's body in transparent
form (in general the feet and arms) and one can
see some details of the chair through it. Also,
Bosio reported that the process was gradual so
that during the first stages people could see
parts of the medium's bones and flesh because
the upper skin had become transparent first.
Another picture shows an empty chair. The me-
dium's body simply disappeared but a diapha-
nous image of her body can be seen on the left.
To my knowledge there is no other account simi-
lar to this one in the psychic literature, although
many reports do exist about changes in the me-
dium's weight. Anna Prado died at home on
April 23rd 1923 in a fire accident that partially
burned her body. A short note about her death
was published in the October 1923 issue of the
Revue Spirite, p. 378 as described by Magalhaes
in his book.
Ademir Xavier, PhD.
.4 51
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